World Vision's $3 billion investment in child and maternal health

Monday, September 28, 2015

World Vision's five year commitment to Sustainable Development Goals for women's and children's health.

Kevin Jenkins committed World Vision to a $3 billion investment in maternal and child health over the next five years this past weekend.

He told the United Nations General Assembly: "We will invest $3 billion over the next five years to improve the health of women, children and youth, person by person, community by community, in some of the toughest parts of the world."

Mr Jenkins was one of a few civil society leaders given the opportunity to speak among Heads of State, Ministers and leaders from business and the United Nations.

"We will use the money to boost the impact of our health, nutrition, water, sanitation and hygiene programming in a public commitment to the second phase of the Every Woman Every Child movement’s global strategy."

The first phase of Every Woman Every Child expires this year, along with the Millennium Development Goals it supported. United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, who established the movement, called for new commitments to help ensure that all preventable child and maternal deaths are elminated by 2030.

Mr Jenkins pointed out that World Vision had promised to have the $1.5 billion commitment  made in 2010 regularly assessed by a third party. The final assessment showed the organisation actually spent $2 billion.

"Once again, we will have our actions independently verified," he promised.  "We’re asking Member States to be transparent about their spending, so those of us making pledges today need to hold ourselves to the same high standard."​​

To those who say that ending preventable child and maternal deaths is impossible in fragile and violence-prone states, he quoted examples from a trip he made to Afghanistan to see World Vision field work, just a week before.

"It’s a great example of a sustainable intervention - saving the lives of babies who otherwise would die.​"I visited the first neo-natal unit in Western Afghanistan, which was built by World Vision with donor funding," he said. He explained that World Vision continues to contribute to staff training but the government has taken the unit over, running it very successfully.

"I travelled with mobile medical teams in far-flung displacement camps and saw clinics for street children in cities. Each time, the story was the same – good development and government partnering is saving lives."