Annual Report: CONNECT Girls Center August 2018 – September 2018

The project is implemented by HealthPartners and is funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) through Cooperative Agreement Number 7200AA18CA00016. The project includes two main activities: Cooperative Training and Technical Assistance, which empowers the informal sector to access and demand quality care by training care providers to offer cooperative health insurance and strengthening the sustainability and governance of new and existing cooperatives; and Connecting Girls to Coops and Cross Sector Networks, which pilots cooperative Girls Centers to enable coops to manage partnerships that link health, income generation, nutrition, and leadership to expand membership and add value for members and their communities with a focus on youth and young women aged 10-24. HealthPartners works with a wide range of government, health cooperative, and non-governmental partners, including the Uganda Ministry of Health, Ministry of Trade, Industry and Cooperatives, Ministry of Gender, Labor and Social Development, Uganda Protestant and Catholic Medical Bureaus, Abt. Associates, We Effect, Compassion International, Bioversity, District Commercial Officers, Community Development Officers, and registered health cooperatives and pre-cooperatives. The project design was adjusted based on recommendations from partners, including investing in several Girls Centers at locations selected by registered health cooperatives and streamlining NHIS support by focusing on increasing access to and demand for health insurance with the informal sector. The project has several indicators, including the $ value of income and/or services delivered to members by cooperatives, the percentage of members who perceive value in cooperative membership, the number of cooperative members benefitting from services and resources, the number of cooperatives benefitting from the use of CDP-developed tools and resources, the number of cooperatives with improved governance, and the percentage of female participants in USG-assisted programs designed to increase access to productive economic resources. The project aims to achieve these indicators through various activities, including training care providers, strengthening cooperative governance, and piloting cooperative Girls Centers. The project team is eager to work under the leadership of an experienced monitoring and evaluation manager, who will need to move quickly to gain lost time in preparing for the baseline assessment, completing the Performance Management Plan, and making sure monitoring tools capture data that will be used to inform adjustments. The team will continue to identify challenges and opportunities through the Technical Advisor Steering Committee, Center Steering Committee, and partners, and will share evidence of what is working and what needs to be changed in quarterly reports.