Tag Archives: USAID

Change agents and social marketing presentation at the World Social Marketing Conference in Toronto

Posted on 23 Apr 2013 | 1 Comment

logo-WSMNick presented at the World Social Marketing Conference held in Toronto, Canada. His paper showed how to support social and behaviour change through the use of change agents. It will be useful for those designing and implementing social marketing programs and research. How we select change agents – e.g. peer educators, opinion leaders, community health workers and counsellors – helps determine the effectiveness of a program. While there is evidence to support the use of change agents, there are limitations to current methods to select effective ones. This paper  examined new evidence from the field for a method to help find effective change agents. It will draw on several case studies, including alcohol use in Australia and an Indonesian community based sanitation program.

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Improving health and nutrition through Galli Galli Sim Sim, the Indian co-production of Sesame Street

Posted on 8 Mar 2013 | Leave a comment

The Sesame Workshop in India has launched a healthy habits campaign as part of Galli Galli Sim Sim (GGSS), the Indian co-production of Sesame Street. The GGSS Mobile Community Viewing (MCV) program trains local change agents to provide health information to slum neighbourhoods. They use a repurposed, GGSS-branded vegetable cart carrying a TV set and a DVD player showing segments on health and nutrition, followed by distribution of educational materials to children and caregivers. This slum roadshow also features activities such as mask-making and theatre. An evaluation of the program notes that exposure to the GGSS’s MCV is associated with increases in children’s knowledge of sources of milk (calcium), healthy foods, and steps of handwashing – as well as with caregivers’ knowledge of vegetables. This shows the importance of a mix of methods to reach the intended audience, based on how and where they seek health information.

Launched in 2006, Galli Galli Sim Sim (GGSS) is a broad-based, multimedia educational initiative for young Indian children modeled on Sesame Street, the US-based Sesame Workshop’s entertainment-education series for preschoolers. Created through a partnership between Sesame Workshop and Turner India, in creative collaboration with Miditech Pvt. Ltd., the television series aims to promote joyful learning of basic life skills – be they cognitive, social, emotional, or physical – for India’s children, and to raise awareness about the importance of early childhood development and education.

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Half the Sky videos a useful tool for social change

Posted on 16 Oct 2012 | Leave a comment

The USAID-funded, FHI 360-managed Communication for Change (C-Change) project has supported the development of 18 short educational and advocacy videos aimed at increasing global awareness and bringing about social change for critical health and gender equality and empowerment topics.

The videos were developed as part of the Half the Sky Movement, a multi-donor, multimedia initiative in collaboration with Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, authors of the best-selling book ‘Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide’. The centerpiece of the multimedia initiative is a four-hour PBS television series, which will be premiered on October 1st and 2nd.

The 18 Half the Sky Movement videos produced by Show of Force were filmed in India, Kenya, Somaliland, and Liberia for use by NGOs, governments and other groups that advocate for and work to bring about change on issues such as family planning/reproductive health, maternal and child health, girl’s education, sex trafficking, women’s economic empowerment, and domestic violence. The videos were filmed in partnership with a cadre of NGOs working in health and development, including CEDPA, Deworm the World, CARE, IRC, SEWA, Girl Child Network, Pathfinder, and others that will engage these products in their existing programming. Videos without English subtitles and in additional formats can be downloaded here.

Through C-Change, USAID has also supported the development of three mobile phone games on health and gender equity, developed by Show of Force partner, Games for Change, which will be launched in the early fall for use in East Africa and India.

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JHU-led team awarded $108 million USAID Health Communication Capacity Collaborative (HC3)

Posted on 3 Oct 2012 | Leave a comment

(c) Center for Communication Programs, Courtesy of Photoshare

USAID has awarded the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Center for Communication Programs (JHU-CCP) a five-year, $108-million global health communication project to assist developing countries promote healthier behaviours.

The project – called the Health Communication Capacity Collaborative (HC3) – will be led by JHU∙CCP and includes Management Sciences for Health and NetHope as well as specialised communication partners Ogilvy Public Relations, Internews, Population Services International and an array of regional and country partners. It will use state-of-the-art techniques to build the capacity of local organizations to design, implement and evaluate communication projects that make a real difference in the health behaviours of their own communities.

Note: Goodwin Collaboration provided consultancy services as part of the development of the HC3 proposal. 

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Posted in Clients, Goodwin Collaboration, Opportunities, Partners

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US announces new business partner for child survival in India – Pharmasynth Formulations

Posted on 1 Sep 2012 | Leave a comment

U.S. Ambassador to the the UN, Susan Rice, has announced that the U.S. has added an important new partner – Indian company Pharmasynth Formulations – to its Friends of Childhood Alliance, or “Sathi Bachpan Ke,” which works to expand the availability and use of life-saving products for children.

In June, the governments of the United States, India and Ethiopia, in collaboration with UNICEF, launched a new global Call to Action for Child Survival: A Promise Renewed. This initiative aims to eliminate preventable child deaths by the year 2035, so that all children born in India and elsewhere live to see their fifth birthdays and beyond.

Solutions for improving child survival in India and so many other countries are often relatively inexpensive and very straightforward: a bednet, an oral rehydration packet, a vaccine. Provision of these products is important, however success will be driven by effective marketing to ensure their use.

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FP: Hired Gun Fight – Obama’s aid chief takes on the development contractors

Posted on 20 Jul 2012 | Leave a comment

In his piece in Foreign Policy, John Norris takes a look at how Rajiv Shah, USAID administrator, is fighting to make U.S. foreign aid programs less dependent on American for-profit contractors. At the same time, Shah is aiming to roughly double the amount of assistance that flows directly to governments, entrepreneurs, educational institutions, and NGOs in the developing world.

The 10 largest USAID contractors received more than US$3.19 billion in 2011, and more than 27 per cent of the agency’s funding was directed to American for-profit firms. If the for-profit contractor Chemonics were a country, it would have been the third-largest recipient of USAID funding in the world in 2011, behind only Afghanistan and Haiti.

The theory behind supporting local institutions is that if the goal of development is to build sustainable local capacity and ownership, developing countries should play a larger role in solving their own problems. This is seen as good development policy and it has the potential to save American taxpayers money through reducing spending. USAID hopes to reach its target of 30 per cent of its aid being channeled directly to local organizations in the developing world by 2015. Shah’s aggressive plan faces possible opposition should there be a change of government after the US elections in November. For-profit contractors have always had their strongest allies in the Republican party.

There is an opportunity for those organisations seeking to work with USAID to align themselves with this new agenda. By focusing on building capacity and local partnerships as much as how they deliver services, for-profit and not-for-profit organizations will be more likely to secure USAID support in the future.

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New report says 85% of Asia’s coral reefs are at risk

Posted on 9 Jul 2012 | Leave a comment

More than 85 per cent of reefs in Asia’s “Coral Triangle” are directly threatened by human activities such as coastal development, pollution and overfishing, a new report warns. Launched at the International Coral Reef Symposium in Cairns, it urged greater efforts to reduce destructive fishing, harmful tourism practices and run-off from land.

“When these threats are combined with recent coral bleaching, prompted by rising ocean temperatures, the percent of reefs rated as threatened increases to more than 90 percent,” the report said. The World Resources Institute produced the report in close collaboration with the USAID-funded Coral Triangle Support Partnership (CTSP).

Asia’s Coral Triangle covers Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, The Solomon Islands,and East Timor and contains nearly 30 per cent of the world’s reefs and more than 3,000 species of fish. More than 130 million people living in the region rely on reef ecosystems for food, employment, and revenue from tourism. Low awareness among local communities and tourists of the connection between individual behaviours and damage to coral reefs means that programs to address these are needed.

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USAID releases Climate Change and Development Strategy

Posted on 24 Feb 2012 | Leave a comment

Courtesy of MFAN

USAID has released its Climate Change and Development Strategy 2012-16 as part of President Obama’s Global Climate Change Initiative (GCCI). As part of the GCCI, the US Government said it would work with partners to provide “fast start” climate finance approaching $30 billion. Coordinated by Kit Batten, USAID Global Climate Change Coordinator, the strategy aims to support strategies to advance “clean development” in poor countries. Overall, it has been met positively by many in the development community.

To date, the GCCI has used a range of mechanisms – bilateral, multilateral and private – to build resilience to unavoidable climate impacts; reduce emissions from deforestation and land degradation; and support low-carbon development strategies and the transition to a clean energy economy. Two examples of USAID projects are:

Clean energy in India: $9 million leveraged $200 million in private sector investment, to bring online 381 megawatts of new electricity generation capacity using bagasse—a biofuel made from sugar cane waste—reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 26 million tons. This technology was then adopted by six more Indian power plants.

Avoiding deforestation in Indonesia: the US Government is combatting illegal logging, improving forest management and conservation, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

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US Congress cuts $8 billion from foreign aid budget

Posted on 3 Jan 2012 | Leave a comment

Devex reports that the U.S. Congress passed a 2012 spending bill that includes more than $8 billion in cuts to U.S. President Barack Obama’s budget request for State and foreign operations, including USAID. The approved budget is also $2.54 billion less than what the U.S. development community has supported but does include slight increases in allocations for U.S. global health programs, among others. The Global Health Initiative, which is aimed at combating HIV-AIDS and other diseases, would get an 11 per cent increase to US$8.7 billion. The likelihood of future budget cuts to the US’s $28.7 billion in net official development assistance (ODA) depends on the health of the US economy and the results of the 2012 presidential elections.

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Being a real man – changing social norms on HIV/AIDS in Cambodia

Posted on 28 Dec 2011 | Leave a comment

The Communication Initiative has produced a brief report on PRASIT, an effective reproductive health campaign from Cambodia implemented by Family Health International (FHI-360). PRASIT works to prevent HIV by reaching out to entertainment workers, their mainly middle class and male clients, and men who have sex with men (MSM) using strategic behaviour communication. Strategies employed by PRASIT (which means effectiveness in Khmer) have focused on branding, community outreach, mass media campaigns and peer education. PRASIT employs an empowering approach by focusing on the needs and perceptions of sex workers and MSM and promoting existing cultural and social norms. The program is funded by the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) through USAID.

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