Building on the success of their recently completed family planning project in Indonesia, the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation are keeping the momentum going by establishing two new independent organizations to continue the work.
One organization, Yayasan Jalin, will be an independent social and behavior change NGO and the other, Demi Kita, will be a private sector company. Demi Kita will build off the CCP-built Skata digital platforms and continue to expand and create content and provide capacity building outreach workers, midwives and end users. Both will be part of CCP’s global network. Each will be led by Indonesian women – Yunita Wahyuningrum and Dinar Pandan Sari, respectively – who have been longtime valued CCP staff members.
MyChoice – the seven-year project that ended in September –worked with the Indonesian government and its family planning arm BKKBN to significantly increase access to demand for modern contraception for millions of women in the country. Indonesia has the fourth-largest population in the world at roughly 260 million, behind only China, India and the United States.
“This project was very successful by any measure,” says CCP’s Deputy Director Alice Payne Merritt, who oversaw the Indonesia work. “But a project ends … and sometimes those outputs can disappear. With these two new organizations, we can ensure that the successes in family planning are sustainable long into the future.”
Says CCP’s Robert Ainslie, one of the project’s leaders in Indonesia: “These organizations will continue the legacy of CCP in Indonesia. They will allow our important work to continue and even improve on what we have already put in place.”
After MyChoice boosted the use of modern contraception in several regions of the country, BKKBN adopted the program and scaled it up nationwide. MyChoice was built on creating demand for modern contraception by improving family planning counseling, providing easy-to-use digital tools for consumers and providers, and increasing access and ensuring supply to a variety of contraceptive methods, especially the long-acting reversible contraceptives such as IUDs and implants that weren’t widely used in Indonesia before.
MyChoice also put an emphasis on increasing contraceptive use in young women and newlyweds in a way that hadn’t been done previously.
The Gates Foundation is providing seed money to get the two new organizations off the ground and to support their development.
Jalin will provide technical assistance to BBKBN to ensure the sustainability of the MyChoice work. It will also work with CCP on its Indonesia portfolio, including COVID-19 prevention and vaccine uptake, the global early adolescent survey, Meatless Monday and micronutrient supplementation.
“From CCP, I learned that leadership, strategic communication and passion are essential to the success of any program,” says Wahyuningrum, who is now the executive director of Jalin. “Jalin will reflect these core values in our work with the community, in order to achieve our mission: a better quality of life through behavior change communication and empowerment.”
Demi Kita’s mission is to help women and their families improve their lives and health through well-informed choices and accurate sexual and reproductive health information through digital platforms.
“We believe when parents and couples are able to exercise their leadership and are provided with knowledge and skills, they should be able to make the best of their lives,” says Sari, who now heads Demi Kita. “We making it our mission to create the best way for families to realize that untapped potential.”
