Emily Bell — Touch Foundation Proud to Serve in Partnership with President Kikwete
Last week, we were thrilled to have His Excellency President Jakaya Kikwete at a dinner co-hosted by the Touch Foundation and Barrick Gold. The occasion – which drew a diverse group of leaders from the public and private sector – underscored the importance of our blog’s theme this month: government and NGO partnership.
At the dinner on Sept 23, President Kikwete, who was in New York for the United Nations General Assembly, remarked:
“We are very appreciative of the support of Touch Foundation. So I came here to say thank you, Touch Foundation. I came here to tell all of you, to ask all of you to continue to assist Touch Foundation. Build the capacity so that they can help us…Train the doctors who are going to save so many lives – the women who are in need, the children who are dying of malaria, the many people who are dying of diseases that can be cured, diseases that can be eliminated.”
President Kikwete has been a vital partner for the Touch Foundation. His support for our work has enabled Touch to work closely with Tanzanian partners to train hundreds of new health workers and to lay the groundwork for improved healthcare services.
We salute the President’s efforts to expand access to healthcare in his own country as well as his leadership on healthcare in Africa. He has also become a critical partner to the US. An AllAfrica.com article this week noted that Tanzania “has emerged as East Africa’s star player on the US pitch.”
The Touch Foundation will be posting video excerpts and a full write up on the Sept 23 dinner on our website shortly. In addition to President Kikwete, participants included Ray Chambers, Special Envoy to the UN Secretary General for Malaria; Ambassador Eric Goosby, US Global AIDS Coordinator; Rajat Gupta, Special Advisor to the Secretary General of the UN and former Chair of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria; H. E. Augustine Mahiga, Permanent Representative of Tanzania to the UN; and Honorable Prof. David Mwakyusa, Tanzania’s Minister of Health and Social Welfare.
FOR FULL WRITE-UP ON THE EVENT, READ THIS ARTICLE ON OUR TOUCH FOUNDATION WEBSITE.
CLICK HERE TO VIEW SHORT VIDEO OF PRESIDENT KIKWETE AT TOUCH FOUNDATION EVENT.
Emily Bell is Head of Advocacy and Communications at the Touch Foundation.
Michael Kleinman — Sustainability is Not Just a Buzz Word
Somewhere, in a magical, mythical developing country, all aid programs are sustainable. Using participatory approaches, NGOs work with government ministries to design and implement projects which address various underlying causes of poverty, supported by donors who are committed to long-term engagement. It’s a development utopia; an aid worker Valhalla.
Reality, however, falls somewhat short. What does sustainability mean when the government lacks the capacity – or the will – to assume responsibility for service delivery? What does sustainability mean in a country like Chad, or the Congo?
There’s often a kabuki-element to coordinating with a government in a failed or failing state, the triumph of form over function. Consultations, permissions, endless coordination meetings, when everyone knows the projects will end as soon as the NGO leaves, or donor support disappears.
This is not to say that the situation is hopeless, or that the work serves no purpose. A mother doesn’t die in childbirth, a child doesn’t die of diarrhea, a girl learns to read. These are incredible things, even if the project itself isn’t sustainable in the long-term, even if the clinic or school will eventually sit empty.
Sustainability is a reasonable goal in some countries, and an empty promise in others. To that end, we need a new lexicon, a more accurate rhetoric. We need a way of describing our programs that describes – accurately describes – what we can realistically achieve, and what we can’t. It’s the least we owe to ourselves, our donors, and the people we serve.
Michael Kleinman spent a number of years working for aid agencies in Afghanistan, across east and Central Africa, and in Iraq.
Editor’s Note: Establishing a strong relationship with government can be a challenge in many sub-Saharan African countries, particularly in conflict settings. Luckily for the Touch Foundation, Tanzania has enjoyed more than a decade of political stability. For more on Tanzania’s political, economic and development situation, click here.
Emily Bell — Partnering with Government
The Who Cares? Blog will be exploring the theme of government partnerships this month.
In the developing country context, international nonprofits usually require a strong relationship with and buy-in from national and/or local government to enable positive change. The Touch Foundation is no exception. Touch benefits from a close relationship with the Tanzanian Government, meeting and collaborating regularly with their Ministry for Health and Social Welfare. Tanzanian President Jakaya M. Kikwete himself has met with Touch Foundation President Lowell Bryan on several occasions, including at the State House in Dar es Salaam this past spring.
The Touch Foundation’s goals are closely aligned with those of the Tanzanian Government. The Government is determined to improve health care and pledged in 2007 to build hundreds of new clinics and health centers to ensure that no one is more than five kilometers (three miles) from medical care. This infrastructure is essential, but without medical staff, managers, drugs, and other resources, its impact will be limited. Based on our experience at Weill Bugando’s medical college, the Tanzanian Minister for Health and Social Welfare personally asked the Touch Foundation to assist his Ministry in scaling up health worker training capacity at the national level. In early 2007, the Ministry developed the newly published Twiga Initiative to dramatically increase health worker production. With the help of McKinsey & Company, we identified a baseline for current national training capacity and developed and prioritized initiatives to help the government achieve health training goals.
The Tanzanian Government relies on support from donor country governments to carry out its policies. Coordination and communication between donor governments and the myriad of nonprofit organizations in Tanzania are also therefore of paramount importance. In many cases, nonprofits may provide valuable information about a political, health or social situation that can help inform the development policy of a donor country like the US. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is a key development partner for the Touch Foundation in Tanzania. They are supporting our work to strengthen the health workforce through a Global Development Alliance public-private partnership.
An exciting development has been the US President’s Emergency Program for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR)’s growing recognition of the need to train more health workers to control HIV/AIDS globally, particularly in Africa. PEPFAR has committed to supporting developing countries to train at least 140,000 new healthcare workers in HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment and care. In this podcast, Touch Foundation’s Executive Director Lee Wells shares our view on the importance of health workers in tackling the major disease killers.
This month, we welcome your thoughts or experiences relating to government and nonprofits partnerships to support positive change in global healthcare.
Emily Bell is Head of Advocacy and Communications at the Touch Foundation.