This summary is based on the CHANGE Maternal Survival Toolkit, available online at: www.changeproject.org and on CD-ROM. It explores ways of influencing behaviours and encouraging use of health services and health professionals during childbirth and the postpartum period. A number of factors can prevent pregnant women from accessing skilled care, often putting themselves and the child at risk. They include availability of health services and high costs but also, and crucially, local culture, family and community behaviours and traditional practices. The CHANGE Project's approach and this document stress locally appropriate, behaviour-based interventions that integrate what is happening in homes, communities and health facilities. This tool is aimed at organisations and individuals working in the field of mother and child health, and willing to look at maternal and child survival issues from a behaviour change perspective
This document presents profiles of 114 projects (90 country-specific, 12 regional, and 12 global) funded by USAID. It includes a section on USAID projects that support access to education in Africa. The project profiles include the names of implementing organisations, funding periods and amounts, objectives, strategies, key accomplishments, priority activities for the year ahead, and materials and tools available to other projects that can help meet the needs of children and youth affected by HIV and AIDS. The diversity of these projects demonstrates the US government's efforts to meet the wide variety of needs of children and youth affected by HIV and AIDS. Approaches vary in both strategy and scale. The vast majority of projects work with communities to identify opportunities that strengthen existing resources without undermining local ownership. In many places, communities are already mobilised and have systems in place to identify, protect, and provide basic necessities to the most vulnerable children. USAID supports the strengthening and monitoring of these existing activities
The purpose of this study is to make a series of recommendations on how to scale up effective, sustainable community mobilization and capacity-building interventions to mitigate the effects of AIDS on children and families in the countries most seriously affected by the pandemic. Recommendations for change are made in two main areas: programmatic methods and approaches; and global, regional, and national efforts to develop and implement effective strategies. The overall conclusion is that to maximize expansion of programming and to keep it effective, it is important that scaling-up programmes support existing scaling-out activities of implementers and promote and build on community-owned initiatives