Earlier this year, we launched our 2023-2025 Strategic Plan titled Strong Foundations, Broad Horizons. Structured through four lenses, this plan will see us:
- Impact many more lives through our deep commitment to developing and scaling models of health and education excellence, including AdaraNewborn and AdaraRemote.
- ‘Prove and improve’ our programmes, with an enhanced emphasis on monitoring and evaluation.
- Amplify our reach by sharing our knowledge widely.
- Resource and enable our vital work through robust strategies to continue developing Adara’s operations.
We want to scale the impact of our programmes by sharing data, research conclusions, training packages and even our mistakes. We are taking all of our learnings from 25 years’ experience in Remote Community Development and Maternal, Newborn and Child Health, and business-for-purpose and sharing them locally, nationally and globally.
“In our 2023-2025 Strategic Plan, we are documenting our knowledge in a more structured way and ensuring that the resources we create are appropriate for the target audience and available on channels that are easily accessible,” says Adara’s Knowledge Sharing Manager, Georgia Carter.
“We have big plans to develop resources that leverage the learnings from our programmes and the deep expertise of our teams to impact, influence and inspire many others to create change in their own communities,” Georgia says.
One of our upcoming knowledge sharing highlights is the launch of our Adara Knowledge Centre.
“All resources will be easily accessible and free on the new Adara Knowledge Centre – an online platform that will allow other organisations and individuals to download and learn from our expertise,” Georgia explains. “We have recently launched this platform with our first few resources.”
You can visit the Adara Knowledge Centre here: https://knowledgecentre.adaragroup.org/
Remote Community Development Knowledge Sharing Highlights
We have exciting plans to share our expertise in Remote Community Development. To help facilitate this knowledge sharing, we have recently hired a Nepal Knowledge Sharing Manager, Pragya Lamsal.
“Adara has been working in Nepal for the past 25 years and has such deep experience in the areas of remote education, health, youth development and child protection,” expresses Pragya. “Knowledge is power, but it is much more powerful when shared. I am excited to have an opportunity to create educational and insightful resources that can be shared to increase our reach and have a greater impact in the lives of others.”
As part of our plans for 2023, we are creating a resource on the construction and benefits of greenhouses in remote locations. For many years, we have constructed greenhouses in our target villages in Humla. As a result, we have seen an increase in access to food year-round. By developing this resource and sharing it with others, we hope to support food security in other remote communities.
We also plan to share data and learnings from our work with the communities we work alongside. In 2021, we conducted a comprehensive household survey in Humla. This year we will disseminate the results back to the community. These insights will inform our future programme design and we will share them with others working in similar areas.
One area we believe we have significant knowledge to share is remote education. Over the past 25 years, we have developed a comprehensive child-centred model for community development – AdaraRemote. This model centres on education, ensuring that all children in our communities of operation, especially girls, have access to quality education from early learning to tertiary level. One of our major knowledge sharing projects this year is assessing the need and requirements to package our knowledge in remote education. This package would include six components.
We implement this model at 16 schools across Nepal but we know we can significantly expand our reach by sharing our knowledge with others.
“We believe this education model has the potential to impact the lives of people living in low-resource settings in Nepal and around the world,” says Pragya. “It could increase access to education, transforming the futures of countless students.”
Maternal, Newborn and Child Health Knowledge Sharing Highlights
As we grow our work in Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (MNCH) in Uganda, knowledge sharing will play a critical role in educating and ensuring consistency of high-quality care.
Knowledge sharing is a key component of AdaraNewborn, our high impact, evidence-based model of maternal and newborn care to halve newborn deaths and stillbirths in 10 health facilities across Uganda in 10 years.
Key activities for this year include launching and circulating our Hospital to Home (H2H) package. H2H is our flagship newborn follow-up programme. It’s designed to support newborns to survive and thrive. Though H2H is part of our AdaraNewborn model and will be rolled out to all AdaraNewborn facilities, we also plan to make it available as a standalone package for others to implement in their own facilities.
“This package contains detailed guidelines, training modules and resources needed to implement H2H in other health facilities,” says Georgia. “We’re proud that the package has been endorsed by the Ugandan Ministry of Health. It’s our hope that this package will share our expertise and allow other facilities to implement the evidence-based programme.”
As we scale AdaraNewborn, our Global Health team are busy creating a training package that will cover the continuum of care for newborns and mothers across the five arms of AdaraNewborn. We will deliver training for each arm in phases. This will be coupled with hands-on skills practice and ongoing bedside mentorship to ensure a strong foundation for the provision of quality care.
We also work with the experienced staff at Kiwoko Hospital to coordinate exposure visits and training opportunities for other hospital staff and organisations. These visits provide an opportunity for others to see our work in newborn care.
Internal Knowledge Sharing Highlights
For 25 years, we have worked with remote communities in Uganda and Nepal. We want to facilitate the exchange of knowledge internally between our teams to adapt learnings to different settings. We do this in a range of ways.
Each month we host a ‘Snack N Share’, where team members present on a current project and give staff the opportunity to gain greater insight into our work. It is a wonderful chance for teams to bond and provokes thoughtful discussion and questions.
Our Global Health team, who work predominately with Uganda, have recently returned from a trip to Humla, Nepal. During their travels, they provided education to birthing centre staff and female community health volunteers to increase the survival rate of newborns in Humla. This follows our Nepal team travelling to Uganda at the end of 2019, pre-pandemic, to see our MNCH work in action.
“2023 is going to be a big year for Knowledge Sharing and we are excited to share the incredible resources we create with others,” Georgia says. “This is all part of our mission to ensure that each and every person has access to essential resources no matter where they live. We know that by sharing our knowledge, we can increase the number of lives we impact across the world.”
Read our full 2023-2025 strategy: https://bit.ly/AdaraStrategy
