MSI-US

MSI-United States (MSI-US) provides reproductive health services to women and men in the Sahel region of West Africa in Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, and Senegal. Following on the success of two previous restricted grants to their regional Sahel program, this flexible program support will allow MSI-US to be responsive and innovative in their reproductive health service delivery. They have opportunities to expand to new countries and to continue to innovate in how they reach clients living in poverty and young people. MSI’s Sahel program will also focus on staff capacity and morale, which has suffered during COVID-19. This grant is aligned with the Global Reproductive Equity strategy to support the SRHR ecosystem in Francophone West Africa.

Marie Stopes International-US (MSI) is one of the largest family planning and reproductive health service delivery organizations in the world. This grant would support a partnership between MSI and IDEO.org to use design thinking, or human-centered design, to prototype new ways to increase the number of young people who use reproductive health services in Zambia. MSI’s program in Zambia seeks to increase the number of youth using its services, given this population’s high unplanned pregnancy rates, and this collaboration with IDEO.org is expected to provide innovative solutions for MSI to test. This project also seeks to demonstrate to the field the potential value of design thinking as an approach for increasing reproductive health services more broadly. The grant is proposed as part of the Foundation’s new strategy to use new tools and approaches to make sure that no woman has an unintended pregnancy in sub-Saharan Africa.