Equity is at the foundation of Pathfinder’s work to strengthen resilient health systems, through lasting and trusted local partnerships, in support of sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) for all. Sustainable progress requires dismantling systems of white supremacy and the harm they inflict in the countries and communities where we work.
Through Pathfinder’s country-led strategy, we are continually working to create a more equitable, inclusive organization. By promoting power-sharing and power-shifting mindsets, our programs build increased health, gender, and economic equity for marginalized and underserved groups. And our internal structures, systems, and policies create an equitable work environment for Pathfinder staff around the world. Real change happens when both sides actively participate—the ones relinquishing power and those receiving it. As Project Director of the USAID/PREPARE-BURKINA project and Pathfinder’s Country Director in Burkina Faso, I have been challenging the belief that only our colleagues in the Global North possess the necessary knowledge and expertise to deliver strong programs and lasting results. Our staff in Africa and South Asia are taking control of our operations, deciding what support we need, and choosing the most relevant partners. As Country Director, I make strategic decisions about which opportunities to pursue, ensuring that local expertise is recognized and prioritized.
Our equity lens informs the structure and country leadership of our operations, the ways we communicate about our work, and the many program examples that follow.
Our country teams work side by side with local partners and communities to support implementation of locally led solutions to reach underserved populations, often in settings affected by conflict, climate, and other emergencies.
- Our Preventing Child, Early, and Forced Marriage (CEFM) and Countering Violent Extremism in Cabo Delgado project in Mozambique works with young people, their families and communities, and multisectoral partners including school and health staff, judicial and law enforcement authorities, and policymakers in conflict-affected settings to improve the lives and livelihoods of adolescent girls and young women vulnerable to CEFM, boys and young men vulnerable to violent extremism. The project has shared key recommendations for navigating the implementation challenges of operating in a conflict setting.
- Our USAID PRÉPAration pour la RÉsilience au BURKINA (PREPARE-BURKINA) project supports implementation of locally led solutions that help communities vulnerable to climate emergencies to build resilience to shocks and natural disasters while improving access to health care.
- Pathfinder Bangladesh worked in Cox’s Bazar, the world’s largest refugee camp, in partnership with the government of Bangladesh, community leaders, and local nongovernmental organization Research, Training, and Management International to strengthen the provision of SRHR information and services for host communities and support the provision of quality essential SRHR information and services where there were none for forcibly displaced Rohingya from Myanmar.
- Pathfinder Mozambique worked with key populations, including LGBTQI+ communities, people who sell sex, people who inject drugs, incarcerated people, and men who have sex with men, to expand awareness among historically marginalized populations of their rights and access to quality health information and services through our rights-based HIV programming under the PITCH program, Hands Off II, and VIDAS.
- Pathfinder has worked in migratory pastoralist settings to deliver AYSRH programming through AWH in Ethiopia and climate resilience programming through the Endangered Ecosystems of Northern Tanzania in Tanzania’s Northern Rangelands.
We devote critical focus to meeting the diverse needs of the world’s growing, heterogeneous AY population with gender-transformative programs across life stages.
- We reached very young adolescents with Act With Her; adolescent girls and young women and adolescent boys and young men with Impacto in Mozambique; young married couples and first-time parents with Youth Voices for Agency and Access (YUVAA) in India; and married adolescents with the Reaching Married Adolescents (RMA) program in Niger—whose long-term post-intervention analysis showed the sustained impact of RMA’s novel, community-based, gender-synchronized intervention on modern contraceptive use.
- A recent feature in our Country-Led in Action LinkedIn newsletter series—Stewarding Global & Multi-Country Projects through Youth-Led, Community-Driven Change—illustrates how two large USAID-funded multi-country projects, MOMENTUM Integrated Health Resilience and E2A, cultivated youth leadership of SRHR programming in Niger.
- We also pioneered the innovative Beyond Bias program for provider behavior change in Burkina Faso, Pakistan, and Tanzania to ensure young people equitable access to quality SRHR services free from bias and discrimination and have since replicated the program in new countries, including Mozambique and Uganda.
- And through (re)solve, we engaged in multisectoral partnerships—for example, working with the education sector in Burkina Faso—to use behavioral insights and human-centered design approaches to develop an interactive board game to promote contraceptive knowledge, awareness, and use among young girls in school. The intervention was shown to increase positive attitudes about contraception among girls who participated.
We work with national, subnational, and local governments to sustainably strengthen resilient health systems to equitably provide quality services for all. These four projects are great examples:
- Act With Her has worked in Ethiopia and Jordan to advance the rights, agency, and choice of adolescents with local health systems strengthening activities to enhance services and support for AY, including cross-sector governance; social accountability via community score cards; and gender- and age-sensitivity health workforce training.
- Shukhi Jibon in Bangladesh worked to advance universal access to care by supporting provision of community-based postpartum FP and postabortion FP.
- Transform: Primary Health Care in Ethiopia worked to advance a ready and resilient health system by supporting implementation of the connected woreda strategy, a locally developed health management information system (HMIS) performance-monitoring tool.
- Evidence to Action (E2A) advanced an enabling environment with the Tool for AYSRH-Responsive Planning (TARP)—a user-friendly digital tool to amplify AY voices and facilitate their meaningful participation in national planning and policy development.
The equity lens Pathfinder brings to our programs is guided by the understanding that individuals, communities, and organizations are the experts on their own needs and solutions. We prioritize local leadership, expertise, and innovation. We support national, subnational, and local efforts to employ intersectional, adolescent and youth (AY)-responsive, gender-transformative approaches to improve SRHR and related outcomes among underserved populations. And we recognize that to do this meaningfully and effectively, we must listen, we must be flexible, and we must embrace diverse ways of collaborating, learning, and adapting.
This story is part of our LinkedIn newsletter series, Country-Led in Action with Pathfinder International, where we delve deep into our country-led approaches, showcasing how our local leaders, teams, and partners are taking the helm in global health and development—leading the strategies, programs, and investments that drive impact in the communities we serve. From navigating complex partnerships to overcoming systemic challenges, we’ll offer practical insights, inspiring success stories, and candid lessons learned about how global organizations can localize effectively.
