 |
Dr. Timothee Gandaho - Partners in Population and Development (PPD)
Timothee is a physician and demographer with a focus on maternal and child health. He is from Benin Republic. He has worked with the Bamako Initiative Project, The POLICY Project, The World Bank, and The Population Council in West Africa. He was Executive Director of Partners in Population and Development (PPD) from September 2001 until December 2005. In this interview he describes PPD's unique method for helping countries to share best practices and a leadership training program funded by the Gates Foundation.
Partners in Population and Development (PPD)
An alliance of 21 developing countries founded in 1994
Mission: Expand and improve South-South collaboration
Vision: South-South cooperation helping to build capacity
Strategy: Encourage adoption of South-South collaboration
PPD is an alliance of 21 countries founded during the International Conference on Population and Development in 1994. Its mission was to expand and improve South-South collaboration in reproductive health and family planning, to strengthen institutional capacity to undertake South-South exchange of best practices, lessons learned and experiences, and to provide South-South training. PPD's secretariat is located in Bangladesh. Its vision is that South-South cooperation will become widely used in building capacity to improve reproductive health. The strategy is to encourage adoption of South-South collaboration by most developing countries to work on population and development issues. PPD's board members represent the Ministries of Health, Finance, or Family Welfare in their countries. Each country has a 'partner country coordinator' who works on collaboration activities. PPD decided to develop a series of projects to share best practices among member countries, with funding from the European Commission.
Sharing Best Practices
Thailand & Vietnam
This project involved cooperation between Thailand and Vietnam to improve quality of care. The goal was to strengthen organizational capacity to offer high quality reproductive health care. Tested experiences from Thailand in promoting long-term contraceptive methods such as the implant and the injectable were replicated in two districts in Vietnam. Contraceptive prevalence rose from 55% to 78% in two years, resulting in a reduction in total fertility.
Bangladesh & Thailand/India/China
This project used Muslim religious leaders from Bangladesh to train community and religious leaders in Muslim minority communities in Thailand, India and China.
Colombia & Panama/Venezuela/Ecuador
PROFAMILIA from Colombia is transferring its peer educator strategy to other institutions in four cities in Panama, Venezuela and Ecuador. The goal is to promote sexual and reproductive health among adolescents in marginal urban areas.
Mexico & Honduras/Peru/Dominican Republic
MEXFAM is working with counterparts in the Dominican Republic, Honduras and Peru to share updated high quality communication materials designed to educate youth on sexual and reproductive health. These countries are using the materials as part of their "Youth Day" activities.
Morocco and Tunisia
The governments of Morocco and Tunisia are collaborating to reduce the prevalence of STIs and HIV/AIDS by developing a regional laboratory and sharing screening tools.
Information and results from reports on these project were published in a book entitled, "Joint Action to Multiply Success." PPD's member countries were initially invited to propose projects. Nineteen projects were proposed. Eleven were selected for review, and five were funded. Each project was managed directly by the countries who participated. PPD's role was to act as coordinator. The projects met their objectives with less than two-thirds of the allocated funding. They were cost effective because the governments involved covered some costs. PPD has used the best practices gathered from these models in a policy dialogue forum with Ministers and Parliamentarians, scientists, and governement officers. Project sites continue the sharing of lessons learned in various ways, like the continued celebration of "Youth Day" and ongoing peer educator programs in Colombia.
Training of mid-level leaders
With funding from the Gates Foundation, PPD trained 1,000 mid-level leaders in reproductive health. Participants come from any developing country. Each country or region chooses areas in which they would like receive training. In India they wanted to learn about management. In Thailand they wanted HIV/AIDS. Morocco and Bangladesh chose safe motherhood. Tunisia chose cultural barriers. Each training activity is conducted in conjunction with an anchor institution in the region. Institutions used for the training have continued the leadership training with other sources of funding.
Visionary leadership training
PPD is also conducting more intensive visionary leadership training for leaders. This includes a self-study program combined with two weeks of mentoring. It begins with self-learning, followed by group training, on-the-job training, and mentoring. It ends with three months of self-study. It was planned that 200 people would participate in the nine month program of self-learning, training, mentoring, on-the-job support, etc. Institutions who have taken part in the process are already replicating the training on a fee-for-training basis in Nairobi and Malaysia.
Key Challenges
It is not easy to coordinate activities among countries. One of the big challenges is the language differences. For an example, look at the use of Muslim leaders from Bangladesh to train counterparts in India, China and Thailand. The leaders' strategy was to use citations from the Koran to show that Islam is not opposed to family planning. However, hey had a problem translating the Koran to English, Vietnamese, Chinese and French. PPD anticipates a similar problem when they take this project to Northern Nigeria.
Taxation is a big problem in South-South cooperation. Southern countries often impose severe taxes on each other. Importing goods from one country to another becomes a special challenge.
Universal access to technology is a final challenge. Communication between countries is difficult because of lack of access to technology and time differences.
|
