Sustaining Advances in Global Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health through Organizational Capacity Building

Building organizational capacity (OC) to improve adolescent sexual and reproductive (ASRH) health is an effective way to initiate and sustain advances in ASRH globally. The Public Health Institute (PHI) has spent the past ten years strengthening OC to address ASRH. From 2011-2012 PHI implemented a year-long organizational capacity building (OCB)  initiative to strengthen the local response of organizations to high levels of adolescent pregnancy, low levels of sexual and reproductive health and HIV knowledge of youth and low levels of youth friendly service delivery in Central America and Mexico.  The initiative, World Bank funded, provided a series of OCB and networking workshops focused on sharing best practices in ASRH among 41 organizations and funded 10 OCB projects. Evaluation’s showed that CSO’s strengthened their institutional capacity in: strategic planning, board development, staff development, revenue generation, program delivery, and strategic relationships.  All grantees linked OCB with ways to incorporate and improve ASRH work with youth and adolescents.  The networking forums increased awareness and knowledge of OCB, the importance of networking and collaboration, and strategies for incorporating youth-friendly ASRH best practices and services into their organizations’ programs and operations and resulted in organizations elaborating next steps to facilitate ongoing networking and collaborative efforts to enhance on-going OCB and improve ASRH work. Youth-adult pairs were included from each organization and commented on the importance of adult-youth exchanges and discussions around ASRH issues.  Adult leaders acknowledged the need for increased youth perspective and participation in ASRH program development and decision-making to sustain ASRH advances.