UNFPA Mali country office hosts first champions thematic meeting of west and central Africa

At its June 2015 regional management team (RMT) meeting in Libreville, a 7-point agenda was agreed upon to take the UNFPA West and Central Africa Region from good to best.  Although much progress was made in several points of this transformative agenda, two of these points namely enhancing the field focus agenda and the promotion of collective responsibility are still lagging behind.

Moving forward the demographic dividend agenda through sound operationalization on the ground called for the whole region to move as one with one voice under one vision.  The intense advocacy over the last two years that has already produced a positive trend in resource mobilization can be consolidated with the recent investments in a WCARO capacity for proposals development that should now be accompanied with stronger engagement delivery capacity as we believe that higher burn rates and greater visibility of results achieved will be an important part of the next steps.

At the global level, the approval of the 2018–2021 Strategic Plan with its 3 transformative goals is calling on the region to pull together its limited resource and focus efforts on leveraging investments towards strategic partnerships for greater impact.

Finally at the Regional Management Team Meeting held in Accra last November, the Regional Director decided to take his vision to the next steps by nominating 12 champions to serve as a group to take forward emerging issues and as a sounding board for the region.

It is against this background that the Champion meeting took place to provide a forum to discuss the proposals put forward by each champion and to agree on activities to be implemented during the year.

The Champions’ meeting will build on the recommendations from the 2018 RMT meeting and the Director’s vision for the region as the implementation of the 2018-2021 Strategic Plan and Regional Programme just begun.

The meeting specifically focused on agreeing on concrete actions to take advantage of gains and to take the region from good to excellent. The main objective was to: Agree on the concrete actions to operationalize the champions’ platform.

The meeting takes the form of open, interactive and constructive discussions with leadership reflections and specific presentations on the aforementioned issues.

• Management and Public Policy
• Change Management
• Partnership and Resource Mobilization
• Procurement and Supply Chain Management
• Maternal health/Sexual and Reproductive Health
• Religious and Traditional leaders
• FGM, child marriage and young people
• Advocacy and communication
• Data, evidence and census
• Family planning
• Demographic Dividend programming and integration
• Human resources and financial