News and Updates from FP2030

Dear colleague,

Transitions are moments of high possibility. A chance to start fresh; a chance to change course. An opportunity to build on what we’ve learned and strike out in new directions. This year is a time of major transitions for our partnership, as FP2020 becomes FP2030.

It’s also a time of personal transitions. As you know, the governance structure for our partnership is changing, and the search for a new Executive Director is well underway. When they come on board, it will be important for them to have a clean slate and a fresh horizon on which to build.

That’s why this is the perfect moment for me to step back. Perfect for where we are in the transition, and perfect for me personally. It can be hard to know exactly when to say goodbye, but sometimes a moment just feels right. Friday, April 30, will be my last day here at FP2030.

Everything is in place for the transition to proceed smoothly over the next few months. Martyn Smith, our Managing Director, will oversee the Secretariat and ensure continuity until the new Executive Director is in place. The Transition Management Team has also drafted an update on our change process overall, which I encourage you to read.

Yet I’m also very aware that this announcement comes during a difficult time for many of you – particularly our colleagues and partners in India – who are feeling first-hand the devastation of this most recent COVID-19 surge, and are still working to ensure women and girls can continue to access essential services like contraception.

This is also a difficult time for our development partners, given the announced and pending funding cutbacks from the UK. This shift in funding is the result of many forces, including pandemic-related economic downturn, and it will be difficult for many programs and service providers to replace this essential funding as soon as possible.

As these changes in funding, program and partnership transitions roll on, we’re also heading toward the Generation Equality Forum in June and the UN Climate Conference, to be hosted by the UK in November – one of the first chances commitment makers to the FP2030 partnership will have to announce their new or renewed commitments on a global stage.

To support countries and all stakeholders in crafting commitments that consider the world’s rapidly evolving funding, gender, racial, and environmental landscape – and to contextualize the impact of the global pandemic – the FP2030 team has continued to develop and refine the FP2030 commitments toolkit, launched earlier this year. The toolkit now has a robust suite of materials for countries and other stakeholders to use while crafting their new or renewed commitments, including guidance on incorporating a wide range of topics in FP2030 commitments, such as domestic financing, emergency preparedness, and postpartum and post-abortion family planning, and we continue to develop new materials as needed.

The Data and Performance Management Team, together with our colleagues at Track20, just hosted a webinar to present the new measurement agenda for the FP2030 partnership, which builds on the FP2020 results framework, Core Indicators, and reporting process. If you weren’t able to attend the webinar, you can now see a full recording and other details on our website.

One of FP2030’s five focus objectives is to transform social and gender norms. This month’s newsletter includes a report from Development Media International on using mass media to promote contraceptive acceptance, with impressive results from a 30-month radio campaign in Burkina Faso.

Another FP2030 focus objective is to improve system responsiveness to individual rights and needs. Emily Young, FP2030 intern, offers a look at what that means for including LGBTI populations in FP2030 commitments and in the family planning movement more broadly.

The journey continues — it won’t be easy, it never has been. Yet we are strong and resilient, and better together than isolated from one another. It has been an enormous privilege to serve this community for the past seven years. I’m so proud to be part of the global movement for family planning, and I know we’ll meet again.

Warmly,

Beth Schlachter

Executive Director

Explore the FP2030 Commitments Toolkit

The FP2030 commitments toolkit is a one-stop resource for creating a robust and transformative commitment to FP2030. Explore guidance around commitment process, domestic financing, rights and empowerment, postpartum and post-abortion family planning, and more. 

Don’t Leave LGBTI Communities Behind in FP2030 Commitments

The commitment process for the FP2030 partnership is live, with governments and other stakeholders recommitting — or committing for the first time — to advancing rights-based family planning. In order to create a commitment that is truly rights-based, commitment makers should consider including specific provisions for LGBTI individuals in their commitments. Learn more from FP2030 Intern, Emily Young. 

Accelerating Family Planning Progress in West Africa Through Mass Media: One Success Story in Burkina Faso

An estimated 218 million women across low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) have an unmet need for contraception: that is, they want to avoid a pregnancy but are not using modern contraceptives. Mass media reaches a large share of the population in these countries, but how effective is it in changing behaviors? To answer this question, Development Media International (DMI) conducted a randomized controlled trial to evaluate the impact of an intensive, 30-month radio campaign in Burkina Faso that promoted family planning. Learn more.

2021 is a year of transition for FP2030. One of the biggest changes: We’re shifting from one centralized Secretariat in Washington, D.C., to a network of regional hubs around the world. Want to learn more, or interested in hosting a regional hub? Check out the new regional hubs FAQ page.

The Transition Oversight Group (TOG) has been working since February, under the leadership of Chair Peter Ngure (Kenya) and Vice Chair Mariama Abdou Gado (Niger), in refining and moving forward the establishment of the new FP2030 structure. The TOG has now released an update on the overall change process, available on the FP2030 website.

Beth Schlachter, after seven years leading FP2020 as Executive Director, is moving on from FP2030. The search for an Executive Director of the FP2030 partnership continues.

FP2030 is pleased to announce a portion of the Jennifer Schlecht Memorial Fund will go toward the Jenn Schlecht Memorial Scholarship for SRH Justice in Fragile Settings, which will provide travel stipends to selected students at Columbia University, Jenn’s alma mater. These stipends will allow students to experience the type of work and study that was formative for Jenn in her early life. More details about the scholarship will be provided soon.

Inside the FP Story is a new podcast series exploring the details of family planning programming, brought to you by FP2030 and Knowledge SUCCESS. Season One: Elements of FP Success is available now. Join us as we have conversations with experts from the most successful countries – Afghanistan, Kenya, Madagascar, and Senegal – and find new insights into best practices, lessons learned, and the continued challenges of working to reduce the barriers that restrict access to family planning. In the first episode, we introduce this season’s topic: What are the components of a successful family planning program? We talk with guests from Afghanistan, Kenya, Mozambique, and Senegal, to explore the “secrets” to family planning success.

As COVID-19 spread in early 2020, the world’s pandemic response set off events and disruptions that shook supply chains, exposing preexisting vulnerabilities and creating new ones. The Reproductive Health Supplies Coalition, with technical support from John Snow Inc., conducted a six-month exercise to assess pandemic-induced constraints to reproductive health product availability. See the results in this new roadmap report.

Nivi, a digital health company, announced a new “Chat for Change Challenge,” a $400,000 competition in which four organizations will win marketing credits and a 12-month subscription to the askNivi platform and Nivi Insights, a dashboard for analyzing user feedback.

UNFPA released its annual State of World Population report, which found almost half of women in 57 developing countries do not have the power to make choices over their health care, contraception, or sex lives, and the pandemic has worsened existing issues.

The Guttmacher Institute announced the launch of 132 online country profiles featuring data and estimates that support investment in sexual and reproductive health. The interactive country profiles present country-specific data from Guttmacher’s Adding It Up body of work and aim to provide advocates, researchers, policymakers, and other stakeholders with supportive evidence on the need for, impact of, and cost of fully investing in sexual and reproductive health services. This wealth of new information is categorized by region: Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America & the Caribbean, and Oceania.

What’s New With the HIPs quarterly newsletter is now available, with information about adaptations of the HIPs during COVID-19, new and upcoming HIP briefs, and a recap of the HIPs in action at GHTechX

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