For this Country-Led in Action newsletter edition, we are sharing our 2025 annual report! The progress, programs, and innovations showcased in the report exemplify our country-led approach.
As our CEO, Dr. Tabinda Sarosh, notes: “In this report, you’ll see women and young people driving progress and access. You’ll find local leaders rising up for long-term resilient solutions.”
Country-led change is not just a principle—it is how meaningful progress takes shape. It starts with women, girls, and their allies identifying what matters most in their communities, shaping solutions rooted in their realities, and moving the work forward.
Pathfinder’s country-led approach is at the center of Women&Co, Pathfinder’s new social innovation platform. Through Women&Co, Pathfinder is investing in women’s ideas, leadership, and enterprise, co-creating responses with communities and backing the solutions women themselves design to grow, sustain, and scale.
Some highlights from the annual report follow.
Participation and Power
When Pathfinder’s Impacto program began in Mozambique, adolescent girls and young women were largely absent from local decision-making bodies, like advisory committees and school councils. The program built a pathway for leadership: civic action was integrated into small-group curricula, girls received civic training, and influential community members supported their participation. By 2025, 93% of committees in Manica province and 99% in Tete province included adolescent girls and young women—where they voice their ideas and perspectives about sexual and reproductive health and rights, women’s autonomy, community development, and civic action.
Mozambique: Breaking Barriers to Women’s Leadership.“
Young People Making Services Work for Them
In Democratic Republic of the Congo, young people helped shaped the design of sexual and reproductive health services meant to serve them. The Youth Corner model created spaces inside health facilities where adolescents and youth could access services tailored to their needs. Just as importantly, Youth Advisory Boards gave young people a formal role in design and implementation. When youth and providers identified that Deaf and hard-of-hearing peers were being left out, the program responded by training staff in sign language—an example of services becoming more inclusive because communities themselves identified the gap. Over a decade, Youth Corners served almost 17,000 young people.
When Women Lead, Resilience Grows
In Bangladesh, women and girls are leading at the intersection of climate resilience, health, and community preparedness. After experiencing the devastating 2022 floods while pregnant and living in extreme poverty, Aklima Begum joined a Pathfinder-supported women’s group. Through training and collective problem-solving, she adopted climate-resilient farming techniques, built new income streams through bamboo and cane crafts, and began contributing to local disaster preparedness and response plans. As she puts it,
“I am no longer just someone’s wife or mother—I am a person, a leader.”
More than 1,000 women like Aklima represent their communities as Climate Champions on local advisory committees responsible for disaster preparedness.
And don’t forget to subscribe to our Country-led in Action Newsletter on LinkedIn to keep up with our country-led journey.
