AISE Consulting is supporting the Bernard van Leer Foundation (BvLF) to reflect on and capture its impact in Peru over 40 years, Peru is a country where it has recently phased out most operations. The expected outcome of this reflection is a concise, engaging, and compelling impact narrative that it can share with Board members, staff, and external stakeholders to help tell its history. The objectives of the project are to:

• Capturing and sharing – in a clear and compelling way— how Bernard Van Leer’s work in Peru contributed to effectively scale initiatives that serve babies, toddlers and the people who care for them, with people in a position to act at scale.
• Creating a historical summary of Bernard Van Leer’s work to support institutional memory as it enters a new strategic period.
• Recognizing and celebrating key partners who worked together with the Bernard Van Leer Foundation to achieve a better future for babies and toddlers growing up in Peru
• Incorporating the voice of caregivers, service providers and to an extent, children themselves into the stories that the Bernard Van Leer Foundation is telling.

WHO in partnership with research institutions in Guinea, Kenya and Somalia/ Somaliland concluded a multi-site implementation research study on FGM. The study tested the effectiveness and implementation strategy of a person-centered intervention package targeting health workers working in antenatal care services (ANC) in primary health facilities. The study found ANC providers in the intervention arm to have significantly improved knowledge, skills and delivery of a FGM prevention counseling technique to their clients. Their clients in turn were significantly more likely to be strongly opposed to FGM, show lower intention to perform FGM to their daughters and higher willingness to be actively engaged in FGM prevention efforts. In addition, this person-centered approach in FGM counseling was found to be feasible, acceptable and appropriate, important considerations for its scale- up.

AISE Consulting is supporting the WHO to develop a research implementation protocol focused on scaling-up activities in Guinea and Kenya.

AISE Consulting was contracted by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to conduct explorative research focused on identifying opportunities for leveraging the Group Antenatal Cohort for pregnant women in Kano, Kaduna, and Nasarawa for other health and development interventions that would utilize women’s peer groups and networks. AISE Consulting also did a mapping of existent women empowerment collectives in the 3 states and provided recommendations on opportunities for leveraging them for financial and gender empowerment interventions.

Centre for the Study of Adolescence (CSA) is an independent non-partisan, non-profit organization, whose core purpose is to advocate and implement policies and programs that enable young people to exercise choice, access services, and participate fully in activities that promote their health and well- being. The Centre is founded upon the principles and aims of promoting and delivering quality Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) education and services for adolescents and youth (10-24 years) in Kenya. AISE Kenya (Usawa East Africa Consulting was contracted to review and revise CSA’s 2021-2025 strategic plan

The objectives of the work include:

• A review of the current strategic plan with a view to updating the context analysis, priority strategic areas (particularly climate change and SRHR, trade and SRHR, sexual diversity and inclusivity, Fund/grants and partnership management), and key targets and stakeholders
• A reflection on the organization’s previous work/strengths with a critical and learning lens (where is the organization particularly effective and successful, where is it not, what can it build on, etc.),
• Working to attain operational clarity around CSA’s overall future trajectory, including by closely anticipating the implications of strategy design on the organization’s internal structure and processes.
• Help CSA identify how it should organize itself (structure/division of organizational roles) to optimally deliver on the strategy.

• Participatory workshop facilitation for Strategic Assessment and Organisational Change Management for WRAPA Nigeria (On behalf of IMA International)
• Utilization focused evaluation for 2 funded projects-United for Body Rights and  ASK projects for Youths across 9 countries in Sub-Saharan  (on behalf of Rutgers International)
• Gender and Social Inclusion analysis for the DFID Health Pooled Fund Evaluation for Integrity Global
• Technical Assistance on the development of an Evaluation Protocol for the World Health Organization
• Technical Assistance to the International Organisation of Migration on a Gender Based Violence and Migration project

AISE Consulting collaboratively supported Rutgers Netherlands to develop Standard Operating Procedures to guide their Ethical review and governance framework in 2022.

The UNESCO O3 program Is a global initiative aimed at promoting comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) for young people around the world. In Nigeria, the program has been implemented in Nigeria with case studies focused on Lagos public schools, with the goal of educating adolescents and young people on various aspects of sexuality and reproductive health. As part of the implementation process, an evaluation program was conducted to assess the impact of the program on the target population. This post will explore the evaluation program and its findings.

AISE consulting was contracted by KIT (Royal tropical Institute in Amsterdam) to conduct the evaluation of the 03 program in Nigeria. The evaluation was designed to assess the effectiveness of the CSE curriculum in improving the knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors of adolescents and young people regarding sexual and reproductive health. The evaluation program involved a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, including surveys, focus groups, and interviews.

The findings of the evaluation program were quite positive. The program was found to have a significant impact on the knowledge and attitudes of the students who participated in it. Students who received the CSE curriculum were found to have a better understanding of various aspects of sexual and reproductive health, including contraception, HIV/AIDS prevention, and gender-based violence. They also exhibited more positive attitudes towards sexual and reproductive health issues, with a greater willingness to seek information and support when needed.

AISE conducted a Rapid Learning review across 4 sub-Saharan African projects to support TetraTech, a multinational development, and consulting firm, in their third-party monitoring work for FCDO (the UK Government)of the Tackling Deadly Diseases in Africa Programme (TDDAP). TDDAP aims to save lives and reduce the impact of disease outbreaks and epidemics by strengthening health systems’ capacity to monitor and respond to outbreaks across Africa. Operational from 2017-22, the Rapid review was done in Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Niger, and Uganda and focused on understanding the One Health Programme in each country and the effectiveness of the programme.

AISE conducted the learning review and process evaluation on the 2-year Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation-funded Mama Ye project - Evidence for Action, to improve Maternal, Neonatal and Child Health outcomes in Kenya and Nigeria.  Details of our key findings are available here in the learning brief.

https://mamaye.org/sites/default/files/docs/E4A%20Learning%20review%20and%20evaluation%20summary_June2022.pdf

AISE Consulting conducted a review for the K4D programme funded by the UK Government in DRC on behalf of the Institute of Development Studies, United Kingdom. The results of the review are available here:

https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/bitstream/handle/20.500.12413/17290/1089_epidemiology_of_malaria_TB_and_HIV_in_DRC.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

In early 2021, we supported the MicroStart microfinance initiative for an Entrepreneurial Workshop focused on training female entrepreneurs in lieu of the Women’s Entrepreneurship Campaign week. This workshop was a flagship program under AISE Consulting’s AISE-Be initiative focused on promoting entrepreneurship initiatives among women, alongside diversity and inclusion in the private and public sectors. More details are available here: https://microstart.be/nl/workshop-for-female-entrepreneurs-in-gent-how-to-identify-your-business-value-proposition

In mid-2021, our company supported IPPF (International Planned Parenthood Federation) by providing technical assistance to the development process of its next strategic framework spanning the period 2023 - 2028. We conducted the qualitative analysis of current national and global SRHR gaps experienced by over 70 IPPF Member Associations and the factors influencing current and future SRHR programming. The results will inform IPPF’s upcoming 2023 - 2028 strategy.

In late 2021, our consultancy supported the TRIAS Diversity and Inclusion assessment using a utilization-focused approach to ensure that its works and this functional process is reflective of the needs of its clients. We applied the IDEAS framework used by TRIAS to guide its diversity and inclusion strategy. AISE Consulting also sought to assess TRIAS ‘work to support inclusion within the organization’ as a journey, and situated the assessment process within a spectrum, to show institutional progress since the inclusion journey began. For this project, we engaged with the TRIAS Brussels staff to identify, from a collective point of view, ‘where the organization wants to be’ and ‘what to do to get into the next level’. Within this framework, the assessment identified advancements and opportunities related to Inclusion at TRIAS.