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Season Two

In Season 2, innovators went above and beyond to fill gaps in finding context-specific, timely, accessible family planning data that people at different levels could understand. Ultimately, five organizations based in Nepal, Nigeria, India, Madagascar, and Kenya were awarded a total of $250,000 dollars to implement their ideas.

From breaking barriers for people with disabilities through inclusive FP/RH guidelines to creating a podcast series showcasing localized, indigenous FP/RH experiences, take a look through these trailblazing organizations and their ideas.

The KM Champion Innovators:

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Blind Youth Association Nepal 

Description: The Blind Youth Association Nepal is a youth-led organization that promotes access to family planning/sexual and reproductive health (FP/SRH) services for People Living With Disabilities (PLWDs) in Nepal.

Innovation: Guidelines on Disability Inclusive FP/SRH Services (GODS)

Despite having rights, feelings, sexual desires and needs, people living with disabilities (PLWDs) in Nepal often have their family planning sexual and reproductive health (FP/SRH) needs unmet. They face barriers that include limited access to services, stigma, ignorance, and negative attitudes, which result in low uptake of FP/SRH services. While Nepal’s constitution seems progressive with laws such as the Safe Motherhood and Reproductive Health Act, such laws are not disability responsive. BYAN’s Guidelines on Disability Inclusive FP/SRH Services (GODS)seeks to reduce barriers for PLWDs in accessing FP/SRH services by creating and promoting disability responsive guidelines for service providers and government officials. The guidelines include information on access, minimum standards, methods and ways of reducing barriers for PLWDs to access safe motherhood and other FP/SRH services. In collaboration with the Ministry of Health and Population’s Family Welfare Division of the government, GODS was created and published in Nepali on the Family Welfare Division’s website. The guidelines are also available in English. 

Results & Lessons Learned 

BYAN was able to share these guidelines through many avenues: the organization conducted a validation workshop among representatives from organizations of persons with disabilities (OPDs), and held meetings with the Family Welfare Division and other experts on the development of the guidelines. They continued to raise awareness and use of GODS through training 181 service providers as master trainers, and 905 service providers through cascade training. BYAN also led a dissemination event among 195 persons with disabilities. Some lessons learned include incorporating people with disabilities in the early stages of planning and policy programming for FP/RH, and bridging the knowledge gap by training more service providers and stakeholders on implementing inclusive FP/RH services.

Resources:

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Population Foundation of India

Description: The Population Foundation of India is an non-profit organization that formulates and implements gender-responsive health interventions in partnership with national and state governments, CSOs, research institutions, and the media.

Innovation: Hindi Language FP/SRH Knowledge Bank

In India, most national media channels report on FP/SRH in English, leaving a vast section of people in Hindi-speaking North Indian states–which have some of the highest fertility rates–devoid of this information.  There was a need for a platform that provides verified data and information for reporting in Hindi newspapers, television stations and digital media platforms. For their knowledge management innovation, The Population Foundation of India translated the FP/SRH information on its existing online Knowledge Bank into Hindi for local and regional journalists. The Hindi resource bank is a one-stop solution for credible and evidence-based information centered on family planning and reproductive health, and sharing the latest developments, information and research within this health area. On the online platform, journalists are able to select a particular state and get information on FP indicators and other parameters such as population growth.  The availability of FP/SRH information in Hindi will bring about increased levels of awareness amongst the population, decision makers, civil society organizations (CSOs), community groups, service providers and frontline workers, resulting in increased uptake of modern FP/SRH services. 

Results and Lessons Learned 

The Population Foundation India has translated 36 resources, originally in English, into Hindi related to six broad themes: Facts and figures of population growth; Characteristics of an effective FP program; Contraception; India’s FP and SRH Policies and Commitments; COVID-19 and Family Planning and Sexual & Reproductive Health. The primary audience of the resource bank is journalists, academics, and CSOs. The average time spent on the Hindi site is 5 minutes and 30 seconds, indicating a high level of engagement. Lessons PFI took away from implementing this innovation include continuing to make materials available in local languages through the Hindi FPRB, and encouraging stakeholders to write and share resources in local languages as well. 

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Projet Jeune Leader

Description: Projet Jeune Leader is a youth-led organization that works in hard-to-reach, under-resourced settings in Madagascar, delivering comprehensive sexuality education in public middle schools. 

Innovation: “Ampitapitao!” A virtual data hub and print magazine series on adolescent SRH

For the past three years, Projet Jeune Leader has been producing a magazine series on sexual and reproductive health (SRH) called EKO that reached adolescents, parents, teachers, and school administrators in hard-to-reach, rural communities in Madagascar. In 2021, the organization received over 4,600 handwritten comments, questions, and suggestions from the series readers. Projet Jeune Leader decided to bring this knowledge and feedback from communities to national level decision makers, through a new print and online magazines series. Projet Jeune Leader Madagascar created four issues of a new, community facing magazine called “Ampitapitao!”, or “Pass it on!”. These issues covered mainstreaming sexuality education, understanding what does and doesn’t work in youth FP/RH, preventing and responding to violence in schools, and strengthening youth-friendly healthcare services. coupled with  a virtual platform to collect, code, and digest comments received from readers. The series is available in French and Malagasy, and creates a critical loop between local knowledge on SRH and national level decision making processes in Madagascar.

Results & Lessons Learned

 “Ampitapitao!” was shared in schools  and community events within Madgascar through PJL’s 43 Educators. Over 4,000 copies of the magazines were circulated to students, parents, and community members across 51 schools during May and June 2022. Upwards of 20,000 middle school students read and discussed the magazines. The team also received 8,498 written comments from readers. Key messages in the magazines include advocating for programs, practices, processes, or policies that have a strong evidence base and are informed by local knowledge and feedback. As of November 2022, over 50 national decision makers and technical advisors received paper-based versions of the nationally oriented magazines. Some key lessons that PJL took from The Pitch focus on engaging meaningfully with civil society partners to incorporate equity and quality into KM, and realizing that audience segmentation plays a key role in understanding what knowledge, values, and priorities in FP/RH are important to focus on.

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Save The Children Kenya

Description: Save the Children Kenya supports the government in strengthening policies and systems to achieve immediate and lasting change in the lives of children so that no child dies from a preventable cause.

Innovation: Centralized FP Data Dashboard

The Kenya Health Information System (KHIS) database hosts very important data on health; however, it lacks context-specific, simplified family planning (FP) data, making it strenuous for health-care workers and policymakers to understand FP trends from the database to inform programming, policy, and decision making. In collaboration with the Division of Reproductive and Maternal Health (DRMH) of the Ministry of Health (MoH) of Kenya, the Clinton Health Access Initiative, and other partners, Save The Children Kenya adapted and revitalized the Family Planning Dashboard. The Centralized FP Data Dashboard analyzes and displays up-to-date, easy-to-interpret, practical data analytics so that users can plan, implement, and monitor the progress of family planning interventions and programs, improving program quality and performance. With access to this data and insights, FP professionals will adapt their interventions or implement new ones to respond to the needs of young girls and women across the country. The Dashboard can be used  by National, County, and Sub-County MOH FP program managers, FP stakeholders, partners, and professionals.

Results & Lessons Learned

From September to November of 2022, there were 89 unique logins to the dashboard, and the number will continue to rise with future dissemination activities. Users can find the dashboard on the National AIDS and STI Control Programme (NASCOP) server, the most preferred server of the MOH. Maintenance of the dashboard will continue to be overseen and funded by the MOH through NASCOP. For Phase 2 of the dashboard, Save the Children plans to include reproductive health indicators, and a Certification Module for trained Healthcare workers. These updates to the dashboard were recommended by MOH officials and other FP stakeholders and partners. A major lesson learned for Save The Children is how collaborating, building coalitions, and mobilizing stakeholders within the knowledge management sector is integral to ensuring organizations pool resources to capture FP/RH data to the best of their ability.

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Strong Enough Girls’ Empowerment Initiative (SEGEI)

Description: Strong Enough Girls’ Empowerment Initiative (SEGEI) is a women-led, youth-focused non-profit igniting, nurturing, and harnessing the intellectual and social strengths of adolescent girls and women through education, mentorship, life skills development and comprehensive family planning and sexuality education in Nigeria.

Innovation: Indi-Genius: A Bi-lingual Podcast Series

Although there is plenty of FP/SRH information in Nigeria, country and context-specific, indigenous knowledge is not well documented. Strong Enough Girls’ Empowerment Initiative (SEGEI) seeks to provide indigenous reproductive health leaders a platform to share local knowledge and FP/RH programming best practices. Indi-Genius, a bi-lingual (English and French) 20-episode podcast series, was created to leverage storytelling to share real-life experiences of grassroots family planning leaders in Nigeria and the Republic of Niger, highlighting what works and what doesn’t in reproductive health programming. The initiative seeks to change the narrative on how FP/RH knowledge is defined, understood, and used by presenting knowledge of indigenous young leaders who are shifting norms and driving change in their communities. To initiate the series, SEGEI and The Youth Ambassadors Network of Niger Republic (RJA SR/PF)  hosted a co-creation workshop to determine the podcast topics among civil society organizations and young leaders. Local young FP leaders were selected to participate in the podcast through a public call on social media platforms. These experts guest starred on the episodes, discussing topics such as FP2030 commitments, FP/RH policies and strategies, adolescents and youth with disabilities, young people and HIV, and engaging community leaders. The podcast was shared on the SEGEI website, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and streaming platforms. Episodes were also translated in English, Pidgin, Igbo, Yoruba, Gade, and French.

Results & Lessons Learned

A myriad of stakeholders played a role in the design and implementation of this activity, including Réseau des jeunes ambassadeurs pour la santé de la reproduction et le planning familial au Niger, USAID, Nigeria Health Watch, Stand With a Girl (SWAG) Initiative, the Federal Ministry of Health, and more.  In addition to the podcast series, SEGEI held Instagram Live conversations in English and French between youth leaders and regional ASRH experts regarding best practices in FP/RH, and fostering intergenerational partnerships. Four of the youth champions were also featured in radio stories after participating in the podcast series. “Indi-Genius” has generated over 300 listens on the website, and over 2,000 listens on Instagram. The Instagram page was viewed over 2,295 times, received over 300 likes, and was shared over 100 times. Through Twitter, the series has been retweeted 69 times, and liked over 100 times. Some lessons learned that SEGEI took away from this experience include tailoring adolescent and youth sexual and reproductive health (AYSRH) programming to the specific needs and voices of youth, and involving young people from the beginning stages of AYSRH design to project implementation.

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