TCI 2.0: How the Organization is Reshaping its Efforts to Serve Global Communities
Even from more than 7,000 miles away, Kim Martin still feels a strong connection to a woman she met in Uganda many years ago.
In her early days as TCI's Senior Communications and Marketing Officer, Kim traveled to Kampala, Uganda to learn about TCI’s efforts there to support the local government in providing family planning services to poor urban communities. There, she met a 37-year-old woman living in poverty who had seven children and wasn’t using any modern contraceptive method. Two of her older daughters had likewise already become pregnant or were sexually active. As her travels continued, Kim could not shake the impact of this experience, but was heartened knowing that TCI’s work could change this woman’s life for the better, through family planning.
"This woman was invited to a TCI-supported integrated outreach event, and ultimately, she chose a permanent family planning method and now advocates for family planning in her community," said Kim. "She was so grateful to interact with community health workers and health providers who cared about her and who could help point her in the right direction. Stories like hers make me incredibly proud of the work we do at the local level and the impact TCI makes on communities around the world."
Supporting local governments
As TCI continues to evolve, Kim is happy her job allows her to tell these inspiring stories to hopefully gain more support for TCI’s work. TCI focuses on supporting local governments to implement family planning and AYSRH interventions in urban areas, specifically those with large urban slum populations. Since TCI launched in 2016, it has seen a steady increase in family planning client volume in all four of its original hubs in East Africa (Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda), Francophone West Africa, India and Nigeria. Overall, client volume across all four has risen by 45% from the point where implementation began. And many of these areas are among the fastest growing (in terms of population) in the world with high rates of unmet need for contraception and teenage pregnancy.
Not surprisingly, the COVID-19 pandemic had a negative impact on the work TCI does, most dramatically in India. “The cities we support there were among the hardest hit by the pandemic, and we saw a drop in client volume in early 2020,” Kim said. However, TCI continued to support local governments to distribute short-acting contraceptives through community health workers and adapted and intensified its support for first-time parents, post-partum family planning interventions and fixed days for providing family planning services in public health facilities. More than a year later, the communities in India supported by TCI are rebounding and finding resourceful ways to deliver quality family planning services.
Impact and self-reliance
Many of the local governments that TCI has supported for the past three or more years are now "graduating", having achieved a level of impact and self-reliance to continue leading family planning and adolescent and youth sexual and reproductive health (AYSRH) programs on their own. In turn, TCI is scaling to new urban areas in need of support. An essential part of this is to continue to build strong relationships with local governments and community partners.
Speaking to Kim, it is clear that TCI remains resolutely committed to continued growth and impact in poor urban settlements in low- and middle-income countries, where communities are particularly vulnerable to poor health outcomes. “We've secured funding for another four years and are seeing an upward trend in client volume following an initial downturn when COVID-19 began in March 2020. We've established a solid cycle of bringing on new cities, as others graduate from TCI after more than three years of support,” said Kim.
Buoyed by its success so far, TCI has set itself ambitious goals for the near future: During the next four years, it intends to reach a total of 170 cities and serve more than 170 million people – a jump from the 118 cities and 118 million people currently supported. Strong early results in the first year of work in TCI’s new Philippines hub encourages the team. When it launched in late 2020, the hub started out supporting three cities. Now, TCI is serving 10. The team is also looking forward to launching its sixth hub this year in Pakistan.
Kim has clear goals too: “I'm excited to continue telling the story of TCI as it supports local governments to become more self-reliant while scaling up proven family planning and AYSRH interventions. We recognize that this is the most effective way to strengthen urban health systems, increase access to modern contraception and sustain those efforts after TCI’s direct support has ended.”