World Vision helps launch group that will look at innovations for health in Asia
Stefan Germann, Director for Partnerships, Innovation & Accountability, Global Health & WASH Team, World Vision International
In support of the United Nations Secretary-General's Global Strategy for Women's and Children's Health, World Vision was pleased to help launch the Innovation Working Group Asia (aIWG) on 28 May. The launch occurred as a side event at the Women Deliver 2013 conference in Malaysia.
The aIWG will serve, alongside the global counterpart Innovation Working Group, to catalyse the initiation and enable the scaling of innovations across technological, social, financial, policy and business domains in Asia. The ultimate goal is to reduce child and maternal mortality.
Mark Kelly, senior director of operations, South Asia and Pacific – World Vision, is serving as co-chair of the group. At the launch event, Rebecca Affolter from the UN Secretary-General’s office said that innovation is key to driving results within the Global Strategy for Women's and Children's Health.
The launch event highlighted the idea that partnerships have power when multiple stakeholders, each with different competitive advantages, come together to tackle issues that individual groups cannot solve on their own. The goal of the aIWG is to foster cooperation among organisations in Asia to develop and scale-up service and education initiatives in the region.
In an invitation to the launch event, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon was quoted as saying:
"Partnership is essential. We have demonstrated that together, governments, the United Nations family, the private sector and civil society can succeed in tackling tremendous challenges... while financial support is essential, so are investments in innovative technology, medicine, social policy and service delivery"
Mr Kelly underscored this point in a speech in which he talked about his recent visits to rural Indonesia and a remote area of Nepal where World Vision is using innovative methods to scale up services for women’s and children’s health.
Stefan Germann - Director for Partnerships, Innovation & Accountability – World Vision, said “despite many competing side events that evening, we had a full house at the launch and got really good feedback from the participants.”
According to its website, the Women Deliver 2013 conference included “thousands of participants from around the world, including government leaders, policymakers, healthcare professionals, NGO representatives, corporate leaders, and global media outlets.” These participants had the opportunity to attend “more than 120 concurrent sessions, high-level plenaries, skills-building workshops, and ministerial and parliamentarian forums” in support of work “to build a better world for girls and women.”
A major item on the conference’s agenda was the United Nations Secretary-General's Global Strategy for Women's and Children's Health, which is more commonly known by its tagline: “Every Woman, Every Child”.