Yemen is facing what many are calling the world’s worst humanitarian crisis: More than 23.4 million people — almost three-quarters of the country’s population — are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance and protection.

Yemen's war, now in its eighth year, has left people without adequate food, clean water and basic health services; a staggering 3.5 million people — primarily children under 5 and pregnant or lactating women — require treatment for acute malnutrition. FHI 360 delivers medical equipment and medicines and trains local women as health volunteers. These volunteers host information sessions and go door to door, offering nutrition instruction and services.

We also look beyond patient care, applying our 360-degree lens to address other critical concerns. Health facilities need reliable electricity, so we have installed solar panels. Medical waste poses a health risk to staff and patients, so we have built medical waste management incinerators and pits and have trained staff how to use them. And to ensure that health facilities and the surrounding communities can reliably access clean water and reduce waterborne illness, we have worked with communities to restore water supplies disrupted by conflict and drought, establishing convenient collection points and building water towers.

Locally led development is good development — and supporting local organizations in expanding their capacity enables all development organizations to have even greater impact.

In Malawi, FHI 360 has worked with the Pakachere Institute of Health and Development Communication (IHDC) to do just that. Pakachere IHDC — a local NGO that specializes in social and behavioral health communication — first partnered with FHI 360 from 2015 to 2019 through the Linkages across the Continuum of HIV Services for Key Populations Affected by HIV (LINKAGES) project. In 2019, after four years of capacity development support from FHI 360, Pakachere IHDC became a direct partner of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). This allowed Pakachere IHDC to secure more funds to increase its geographical footprint and expand its visibility and influence.

When the LINKAGES project concluded, some of its programming transitioned to the Meeting Targets and Maintaining Epidemic Control (EpiC) project, through which FHI 360 and Pakachere IHDC have maintained — and evolved — their partnership. Now, FHI 360 mentors and provides technical assistance to Pakachere IHDC to support its growth and success as a direct partner of USAID.

Pakachere IHDC values investing in other local organizations. “Because of our partnership with FHI 360, our practical experience and our willingness to help, local organizations know that we can help them understand the transition process for becoming a direct partner [to USAID],” says Simon Sikwese, Pakachere IHDC’s executive director. “They are motivated to learn from a fellow local partner.”

Slowing the spread of COVID-19 is one of the world’s greatest public health challenges — and public acceptance of, and demand for, vaccines is a critical component of the equation.

To help boost the uptake of these vaccines around the world, FHI 360 funded the COVID-19 Vaccine Demand Generation initiative and worked with partners to develop a Quick Start Guide (PDF). This practical toolkit can be customized to fit audiences as diverse as shop owners, journalists and religious leaders.

The Quick Start Guide has become a go-to tool. In numerous countries — Papua New Guinea, Jordan, Tanzania and Côte d'Ivoire, to name a few — partners use it to implement social and behavior change interventions, moving beyond awareness to address deep-rooted misperceptions about the safety and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines.

“We came in and cleared all that misinformation about vaccines,” says Godfrey Mwanakulya of T-MARC, a FHI 360 partner organization in Tanzania. “Things changed from August to November — we had a lot of people getting vaccinated.”

Deforestation, drought and urbanization displace populations and often force humans into closer contact with animals, both wild and domestic, that can harbor disease; in fact, more than 60% of known infectious diseases in humans have originated in animals. Treating these diseases has become more challenging, in part because they have grown resistant to antibiotics due to overuse and misuse. FHI 360 believes that we must address this problem with a comprehensive One Health approach that considers human, animal and environmental interactions holistically.

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of effectively preventing, detecting and responding to emerging infectious diseases. In 2021, FHI 360 established a new division — Emerging Infectious Diseases & Health Security. In Vietnam, this team of experts works with the government to address antimicrobial resistance by enhancing surveillance systems and building laboratories’ capacity for disease diagnosis. FHI 360 also worked with the Vietnamese government to strengthen its overall national health system by helping to develop a national One Health framework that brings together multi-sectoral stakeholders to collect and share surveillance data.

The Dominican Republic has been one of the fastest-growing economies in the Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) region over the last 25 years. Still, almost a quarter of the country’s 10 million residents live in poverty, and the 1.9 million people between the ages of 15 and 24 (almost 20% of the population) must contend with both a high rate of unemployment and poor access to quality education and skills training.

Through USAID’s Advance LAC Regional Workforce Development Program — known locally as Avanza (“get going” in Spanish) — FHI 360 has teamed up with four local partners to prepare young people for careers in in-demand fields. The work involves analyzing trends and perceptions in the labor market, strengthening training curricula, building instructors’ knowledge of social-emotional learning and connecting graduates to good jobs. FHI 360 also offers scholarships to students from disadvantaged communities.

“The FHI 360 program has come at the right moment, just when the institution needed it,” says Edwin Salazar, head of curriculum development at Instituto Técnico Superior Comunitario in Santo Domingo, one of FHI 360’s university partners. “The [instructor] teams see hope in Avanza, hope in being able to contribute from their standpoint as a teacher. ... In the students that have entered the program, you see a change, a change of mentality, a change in how they behave, how they channel their needs within the institution.”

Expanding contraceptive choice increases the ability of people to choose a method that meets their needs. The levonorgestrel-releasing intrauterine device (IUD) — also known as the hormonal IUD — is a highly effective, long-acting, reversible contraceptive with noncontraceptive health benefits. But the method was not widely available in low- and middle-income countries until 2021, when it was added to the U.S. Agency for International Development and the United Nations Population Fund product catalogs for the first time.

For years, FHI 360 worked to create an enabling environment to achieve this milestone. In 2021, The Lancet Global Health published results of a study — led by FHI 360 and partners in Nigeria and Zambia — showing that the hormonal IUD could be an important addition to the contraceptive method mix and help expand choice. As the Co-Secretariat for the Hormonal IUD Access Group, FHI 360 engaged with donors and suppliers to align around a phased, focused introduction strategy for the method. FHI 360 also supports country-driven efforts to expand access, including partnering with the federal Ministry of Health in Nigeria to evaluate a hybrid digital training approach for health care providers.

“Method expansion — and, ultimately, increased access for family planning — represents freedom for women to choose healthier and more productive lives,” says Dr. Helen Anyasi, FHI 360 senior technical officer. “This is what makes our work worthwhile.”

FHI 360’s Elimu ni Jibu (“Education is the Answer”) project meets the demand for quality teaching and learning in the Democratic Republic of the Congo amid multiple local emergencies, including decades-long conflict, the recent Ebola epidemic and a volcanic eruption in March 2021. These challenges have negatively affected students’ access to education — and even when children can attend school, the quality of education often does not adequately address their academic and psychosocial needs.

Elimu ni Jibu engages eight local organizations — comprising parents, teachers, coaches and school volunteers — to create solutions to barriers that prevent students from accessing education and to help increase their sense of social safety and well-being. These organizations use a gender-equitable and locally focused approach to create school safety plans and build students’ awareness of dangers and risks found in and around schools. The project has also facilitated the development of Girls Leading Our World (GLOW) clubs, which currently have nearly 500 participants and provide a safe space for girls to build leadership skills and a sense of self-worth.

Much of Elimu ni Jibu’s success is attributed to its innovative programming; it draws in local voices to develop psychosocial support and social-emotional learning materials through cultural songs and stories to raise young learners’ morale and confidence.

The tourism sector in Egypt makes up 10% of the country’s total workforce and is central to the economy. Keeping it vibrant means responding to a growing trend in the tourism industry — offering visitors immersive and memorable experiences that deepen their understanding and appreciation of Egypt’s rich history. To support this effort, FHI 360 is collaborating with the government of Egypt at national and local levels to develop public-private partnerships and stimulate private sector investment in cultural tourism.

In 2021, FHI 360 conducted in-depth interviews with local business owners in Historic Cairo and Luxor Governorate to help assess their needs, then connected them with workshops, skills training and microfinance institutions to help them develop higher-value tourism products and promote cultural experiences. By listening to what communities needed before developing workshops, FHI 360 was able to customize trainings that included women and young people as well as micro, small and medium-sized enterprises. These workshops improved business owners’ skills in crafts, communications, languages, digital marketing and storytelling.

“We reached out to a wide range of people, including business owners, vendors and local community members who are currently unemployed,” says Riham Arram, community engagement and product development expert with the Integrated Management of Cultural Tourism project. “All of these individuals can benefit from our trainings — and their feedback was invaluable for us in creating an effective program.”

More than 650,000 people in the United States are released from prison each year. But social pressures and stigma can make life after incarceration challenging. Many people find that reentering society, finishing school, getting a job and finding connections in their community are difficult goals to achieve. Just as the compass rose symbol on maps guided sailors for generations, FHI 360’s Compass Rose Collaborative helps young adults (ages 18–24) break that cycle, build their self-confidence and navigate life.

Our partners in 10 cities connect them to occupational skills training, mental health services, post-secondary education and meaningful employment. We work in under-resourced communities — in both urban and rural areas — and support tribal communities, young people who are out of school and young adults without employment. We share with our partners best practices for building trust, ways to combat stigma, and innovative recruitment methods, such as having former participants reach out to young people who are leaving the justice system. The Compass Rose Collaborative is 100% funded by the Department of Labor in the amount of $4.5 million. No other sources of funding support this program.

Emily Lubinda first learned about Youth Lead on Facebook. An aspiring entrepreneur, she joined one of eight cohorts of young people who identified a health, women’s rights or governance challenge in their communities — in her case, fighting the stigma around menstruation and making menstrual hygiene products more widely available in Zambia. Through Youth Lead, they received leadership training, participated in internships with 109 public and private host organizations, and designed and implemented capstone projects with community-driven solutions. Along the way, they gained valuable knowledge and experience they can use to become the next generation of leaders in their communities.

The goal of Youth Lead, which began in 2018 and ended in 2021, was to support and elevate outstanding Zambians between 18 and 35 years old by connecting them to a network of other young changemakers, amplifying the impact of their work, inspiring civic innovation and promoting a culture of sustained, citizen-responsive leadership. Because locally led development is the key to sustainability, FHI 360 worked hand-in-hand with our Zambian partner, the National Youth Development Council, which FHI 360 trained to take over the program.

“During the [Youth Lead] trainings, I learned new skills such as problem solving, design thinking and how to implement projects,” Emily says. She also learned how to establish business partnerships. Now, her company, Lumata Business Ventures, has two partners and manufactures and sells diapers and reusable pads.