In 2019, Pathfinder’s Shukhi Jibon project set out to address five common challenges that pervade development assistance and stand in the way of the project’s ultimate goal—to contribute to improved health and human capital in Bangladesh by increasing use of voluntary family planning services. Using a Learning Lab approach, based on USAID’s Collaborating, Learning, and Adapting (CLA) framework, and with strong commitments from the Government of Bangladesh and USAID, Shukhi Jibon implemented six innovative interventions in 39 test sites across six learning districts:
- Advancing a multi-pronged approach to improve the public health system’s responsiveness to the needs of young people.
- Providing postpartum family planning and postabortion care family planning to women who deliver at home.
- Introducing competency-based training (CBT) and follow-up — to enhance the quality of clinical and non-clinical trainings — with the goal of replicating the approach across the MOHFW’s training programs.
- Introducing mentorship and supportive supervision (M&SS) in family planning within the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare’s (MOHFW’s) service networks.
- Operationalizing a training management-information system (TMS) for decision-making by management teams from the National Institute of Population and Training (NIPORT).
- Integrating gender-based violence (GBV) response into sexual and reproductive health service delivery
This brief provides an overview of the project’s robust Learning Lab experience, which provides a roadmap for continuous learning and demonstrates Shukhi Jibon’s progress in rapidly testing, refining, and documenting innovations during a pilot phase before effectively scaling them up to achieve greater impact.
Dig deeper into Shukhi Jibon’s 6 Learning Labs:
- Mentorship and Supportive Supervision
- Adolescent and Youth Sexual and Reproductive Health
- Training Management System
- Competency-Based Training
- Community-Based Postpartum and Postabortion Family Planning
- GBV-Responsive Sexual and Reproductive Health Services
