Category: Locus
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Investing in the next generation of health workers
In Krio, I was called “belly woman.” Rural Sierra Leonean communities had not seen many foreign pregnant “belly women.” Sierra Leone had been recovering from years of conflict that had broken its health system and forced health workers to flee. The 2014-2015 Ebola epidemic only served to demonstrate how this weak health system and inadequate health workforce had prevented an effective response to the epidemic, and left communities without any other basic health services.
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Let’s Stop Playing Catch Up: How Stronger Integration Helps Us Get Ahead of Threats
Achieving the SDG objective of universal coverage of WASH by 2030 will contribute to other important development goals, food security and public health in particular, and help prevent a number of threats. To accomplish these inter-related goals, we need to ensure that the key local stakeholders, in the WASH sector and far beyond, are all in this together. More localized, grown-up conversations amongst various ‘competing’ sectors can help us make greater strides toward 100% coverage of WASH, and make vital progress toward public health and food security.
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Our “biggest frustrations” in building gender sensitive programs
Yesterday was International Women’s Day—a moment for intense reflection for development workers. Thinking hard about gender forces us to think hard about good development: when we force ourselves to confront the many related needs, wants and perspectives of women and girls, we also force ourselves to confront where our standard development toolkit often comes up short in serving those same needs, wants and perspectives.
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Want to help women take more control? Help them tackle multiple problems at once
By Karina L. Weinstein, FXB As my colleague John Coonrod noted, women face an array of challenges which can’t be solved in isolation. If you help a mom send her daughter to school on an empty stomach, how much will she really learn? If you help a woman take her children to a doctor, but […]
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Same recipe, different geography: Holistic approaches are smart for girls and women everywhere
By Tricia Petruney, FHI 360 Here’s a development scenario you’re probably familiar with: Imagine a young girl growing up in a remote rural area, raised in a poor family. Girls here are not typically encouraged in the same way as boys are to imagine themselves having exciting future careers, nor even the more vanilla option […]
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Silos are Sexist
As Locus members, we are committed to integrated programming, but why? And why does it seem to be such an uphill struggle in a world where the prevailing development paradigm is dominated by top-down, narrowly focused, short-term interventions? The most important reason to pursue integrated programming is that it works for women. Women living in […]
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Building a Different World of Work for Women and Girls
By Gregory Adams, Locus Women and girls provide much of the labor and talent that makes our communities work. But they routinely don’t get the pay, opportunities or esteem that men do. International Women’s Day forces us to pay special attention to the variety of challenges that women and girls face, particularly in the world […]
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LOCUS COALITION APPOINTS NEW DIRECTOR
The Locus coalition has named Gregory Adams as its new director. Adams joins the coalition from Oxfam America where he most recently served as director of the organization’s aid effectiveness team and global aid policy lead.
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SHEDDING LIGHT: WEBINAR ON EVALUATING INTEGRATED APPROACHES
Integrated development, which intentionally combines multisectoral approaches to address complex development challenges, is gaining in reputation and popularity. As more programs around the globe use integrated approaches, researchers, development practitioners and other aid professionals need guidance on how to measure the impact of these approaches. FHI 360’s integrated development team, with support from the Bill […]
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A NEW RESEARCH AGENDA AND EXAMPLES FROM THE FIELD
By Sreya Panuganti With the Sustainable Development Goals nearing their one-year anniversary, the global community continues to strive toward eradicating poverty by 2030. In order to achieve this ambitious target, many international development practitioners are embracing a more holistic approach to development, combining traditionally single-sector programming, like health or environment work, into more comprehensive efforts. […]