News Bureau

The key to solving some of West Africa's most pressing health crises is experienced and responsive technical assistance that national health programs can rely upon. In the past the majority of this assistance has come from the developed world. With the growth of technically competent regional health organizations, technical assistance is now located nearer to areas that need it. However, many organizations that offer top-flight technical experience lack the administrative, financial and planning skills to make their organizations sustainable and responsive to their clients.

Confronting the challenge of providing technical assistance in reproductive health, child health and advocacy best practices to demanding clients in multiple countries, organizations are taking time to focus inward on their own management and leadership structures, with the support of the USAID-funded project Action for West Africa Region – Reproductive Health (AWARE-RH).

Methodology

To increase organizations’ skills in management and leadership, AWARE-RH facilitates a participatory process wherein the organization itself assesses and prioritizes its management and leadership strengths and weaknesses, and then develops a detailed plan to address key issues that impede smooth and coordinated response to clients’ issues. As the organization implements its plan, it is assisted with either AWARE-RH assisted individualized programs or trainings of its staff, or larger group events on common issues. AWARE-RH also uses the strengths of its own client organizations to address specific needs in other client organizations, so that organizations not only benefit from skill and capacity development activities, but gain experience in enhancing the skills and capacity of other organizations.

The process of capacity development includes:

1. Participatory Assessment of Key Technical and Management areas
2. Prioritization of problems and strategic planning for problem solutions
3. Implementation of plans, with assistance and training from AWARE-RH
4. Constant and consistent executive mentoring and coaching throughout the process

Organizations use their increased skills in management, planning and implementation to create quality technical results, build a reputation for reliability and build business with their donors. AWARE-RH’s assistance has included training in business planning, marketing, monitoring and evaluation, financial and human resource systems, proposal writing, consulting techniques and leadership development.

“If we have been able to succeed in [a recently awarded consultancy contract], the support of AWARE-RH, that has instilled in us new ways of doing business, was determining and real,” says Mr. Amadou Hassane Sylla, the head of CEFOREP, one of AWARE-RH's Technical Leadership Institutions.

Building Regional Powerhouses

The AWARE-RH project has improved the delivery capacity of six regional Technical Leadership Institutions. These organizations deliver essential technical advice and services in Family Planning, Child Health, Resource mobilization for health and policy guidance and development to national health programs in 21 countries in West and Central Africa.

These institutions are now beginning to use much of the organizational training they have acquired. They are becoming effective in marketing their skills regionally, capturing funding from a variety of donor-funded programs, and achieving successful and documented results.

Cases in Point: CEFOREP and MWANGAZA

With proposal design support from AWARE-RH, one of the Technical Leadership Institutions – CEFOREP -- recently secured funding from the German government for a Knowledge/Attitude/Practice (KAP) study in Senegal. It has also improved post-abortion care activities in Chad, Guinea Bissau, Mali, Togo, Niger and the Cape Verde Islands in. It has increased its business with health activities in the region from 4.6 person weeks of consultancy in 2005 to over 78 person weeks in 2007.

MWANGAZA, a Technical Leadership Institution based in Burkina Faso, has recently been awarded five new international contracts as a result of the organizational development it has undergone through AWARE-RH. Its technical assistance has grown from 15 person weeks of assistance in 2005 to 42 person weeks in 2007. Before 2005, MWANGAZA worked mainly in Burkina Faso. Now it works in Mauritania, Cameroon, Togo and Niger.

Lessons Learned

Through helping regional organizations focus on their own internal organization AWARE-RH is building strong local organizations that can respond to the health challenges of the West Africa Region. This experience has taught these organizations some important lessons:

• Effectiveness of technical activities increases when set within a responsive administrative and management framework.
   
• Well-run regional organizations bring important value to national health programs by spreading the lessons they learn internationally, and applying them to the national context.
   
• Organization and reliability are as attractive to clients as top-flight technical experience.

Learn more about AWARE-RH at www.aware-rh.org