Clients
International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF),
Ipas Africa Alliance for Women’s Reproductive Health and Rights

Period
2022 - 2023

Services
Strategy and Learning,
Partnership

Locations
Africa, Global

Areas
Universal Health & Immunisation,
Social Justice and Empowerment

In 2022 and 2023, Collaborative Impact colleagues worked separately with Ipas Africa Alliance for Women’s Reproductive Health and Rights and the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) to develop Theories of Change (ToC) and accompanying Strategic Notes as the basis for strengthening their respective regional and global partnerships. Collaborative Impact facilitated a ToC design workshop with each of these two clients, engaging their staff and partners in a process of collaboratively articulating their overall programme goal and outlining a clear set of pathways, strategies and desired outcomes towards achieving these goals.

IPPF’s HIV Programme

IPPF is a global service provider and a leader advocate of sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) for all. IPPF provides SRHR services in 172 countries and runs approximately 65,000 service points worldwide. It runs a range of education, awareness and empowerment programmes that support its key mandate of SRHR for all, and seeks to influence governments and other key decision-making bodies to develop SRHR-based policy and legislation.

The ToC and Strategic Note were key to guiding IPPF’s future global HIV programming. IPPF has a long history of commitment to the provision of a continuum of HIV services —from prevention to treatment and care— as a human right and critical element of sexual and reproductive health (SRH). IPPF is a strong proponent of a community-led, inclusive approach to increasing access to HIV services.

Ipas Africa Alliance’s Abortion Consortium

Ipas Africa Alliance is part of Ipas, a global non-governmental organisation dedicated to ending preventable deaths and disabilities from unsafe abortion. Through local, national, and global partnerships, Ipas works to ensure women and girls can access safe abortion and contraceptive care services. The organisation focuses on improving the availability of safe abortion services, enhancing the quality of reproductive health care, and advocating for the rights to reproductive health and autonomy.

In the context of the Africa Alliance, Ipas works across various countries in Africa to address the unique challenges faced by women and girls in accessing reproductive health services on the continent. This includes efforts to: improve availability of quality services, build capacity of healthcare providers to deliver the services, work with governments and policy-makers to develop evidence-based policies in support of these services, and engage communities in discussions about SRHR and the importance of access to safe abortion services.

The ToC and Strategic Note formed the basis for building an effective Abortion Consortium aimed at protecting and expanding SRHR for women and girls in Africa, including access to safe abortion care. The process of developing the collective ToC involved a core group of African NGO partners who had embarked on an ambitious plan for achieving greater ‘collective impact’. A critical element in this process concerned how the core partners would come together, leverage their comparative strengths to protect hard-fought wins, mobilize, and strategize on the best approaches to expand access to safe abortion care, driving delivery at scale and innovation.

Models and Methods Used

• Participatory Sensemaking

• Theory of System Change (ToSC)