• October 3, 2012

    USAID Highlights FHI 360’s Work on Education in El Salvador

    Written by
    Jorge Renderos, Principal, Oscar Arnulfo Romero School

    I live in the Zaragoza region, one of the poorest areas in central El Salvador.  We have limited economic development opportunities for our people, yet one of the highest rates of population density in the country.  While grappling with poverty, our municipality must also deal with gang activity and school violence.

    In order to respond to this situation, my school joined with 12 other schools to form a cluster under the Ministry of Education’s Integrated System for Full Time School (SI-EITP, its acronym in Spanish).  SI-EITP is supported by USAID/El Salvador’s Strengthening Basic Education Program.

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  • October 2, 2012

    Follow-up to the 2012 London Summit on Family Planning

    Written by
    Laura Raney,, Strategic Communications & Knowledge Management Advisor, Jhpiego
    Libby Skolnik, Communications Specialist, MLE Project, CCP

    On Monday, September 17, the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC, hosted “Maintaining the Momentum: Highlights from the 2012 London Summit on Family Planning (FP).” This panel discussion was a virtual who’s who in family planning – with the main room full as well as two additional rooms literally overflowing – as folks gathered to hear current luminaries talk about highlights and next steps to the 2012 London FP Summit, what is now called FP2020. Panel moderator Karen Hardee, of the Futures Group, reminded us that the Summit confirmed family planning as a critical and global issue and that it set impressive goals and raised $2.6 billion dollars in pledged funding over the next eight years with the goal of expanding access to voluntary rights-based family planning for 120 million new users in poorer countries. The gathering represented a melting pot of perspectives with a mix of representation from government, civil society, and the private sector. There were lots of champagne toasts, speeches, and celebration in London, like at any wedding. Now, two months into the marriage, the hard work begins: how do we implement the summit’s lofty goals?

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  • September 26, 2012

    How Preventing HIV from Mother to Child is Also About Contraception

    Written by
    Ward Cates
    Rose Wilcher

    During the month of July 2012, two landmark gatherings advanced global progress in sexual and reproductive health. The Family Planning Summit was held in London on July 11. Co-hosted by the UK Government and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Summit’s goal was to offer millions of vulnerable women around the world renewed hope that they will soon have the means to determine the timing and spacing of their pregnancies through access to modern family planning methods. Less than two weeks later, the AIDS 2012 Conference was held in Washington, D.C. Organized by the International AIDS Society, AIDS 2012 was a multitrack, week-long convention of 24,000 attendees, including heads of state, celebrities, philanthropists, researchers, activists and people living with HIV. Their optimistic vision is to attain an AIDS-free generation.

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  • September 24, 2012

    Reflections on a Legacy of Change

    Written by
    Mark Rasmuson, Director, Department of Global Health Communication, FHI 360

    As I was moderating a final panel for C-Change’s end-of-project meeting in Washington, D.C., it occurred to me that successful development programs usually raise as many questions as they answer. The Communication for Change (C-Change) project was no exception. Indeed, a project as wide-ranging and prolific as C-Change was bound to inspire thoughtful reflection well beyond the question, “Where do we go from here?” The project, the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID’s) flagship program in social and behavior change communication (SBCC) since 2007, has worked with national and local governments in nine countries, universities in five countries, many local nongovernmental organizations in 15 countries and four regional networks with 212 member organizations. All of those partnerships were crucial to embedding SBCC into the hearts, minds and institutions that they reached. But would any of these partnerships endure without a central coordinating body? Or would they even have to endure to be successful? Would it be enough that C-Change, in the words of Rafael Obregon, Chief of Communication for Development at UNICEF, “provided a space for people’s engagement and participation” in a nonprescriptive or message-driven way?

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