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PFI Brochure 2015 |
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Population Foundation of India
“I have always believed that no real
social change can occur in any society
unless women are educated, self reliant
and respected. A woman is the critical
fulcrum of family and community
prosperity.”
JRD Tata
Population Foundation of India (PFI) is a national-
level NGO that works for a healthy India. It does so by
contributing to the formulation and implementation of
gender-sensitive population, health and development
policies, strategies and programmes. PFI was founded
in 1970 by a group of socially committed industrialists
under the leadership of JRD Tata and Bharat Ram. PFI
is guided by an eminent governing board and advisory
council comprising renowned professionals from the
civil society, government and private sector. They
bring in expertise in the fields of health, education,
governance, advocacy, communication, law, and policy
and strategy formulation.
The thrust of PFI’s work on population issues
today focuses on shifting the current thinking and
programmes on family planning to empowering
people, especially women, to take decisions regarding
their health, fertility and well-being. Women’s
empowerment, gender equity and equality, quality of
care, informed and expanded contraceptive choices,
and the sexual and reproductive health needs of
young people both in rural and urban settings are
PFI’s priority areas. Though women, adolescents and
children are PFI’s primary target groups, it sees male
involvement and engagement with community leaders
and institutions as an integral component of its work.
PFI works closely with the Ministry of Health
and Family Welfare to promote family planning and
reproductive rights. Since 2005, PFI has been the
Secretariat of the Advisory Group on Community
Action constituted by the Ministry to provide
technical support and guidance on the community
action component of the National Health Mission.
PFI provided technical support to the ministry and
state governments on the roll out and scale up of the
National Urban Health Mission.
Advocacy
Policy advocacy informed
by empirical evidence is the
cornerstone of PFI’s work. Over
the years, we have advocated
for a number of issues related
to family planning, reproductive and child health,
and adolescent, sexual and reproductive health. Our
advocacy efforts focus on enhancing knowledge
and stimulating the interest of policy makers, the
media and the private sector on rights-based and
gender sensitive health and population policies and
programmes at the national and state levels. This
includes advocacy to improve service provision,
expand the basket of choice for contraceptives,
enhance budget allocation for family planning,
improve quality of care and facilitate effective
implementation of programmes. Our work
enables families, particularly women and socially
disadvantaged groups, to assume control of decisions
regarding their health.
PFI functions as a think tank, using its research
findings and field experiences to build strong
partnerships. To give an example, PFI led a team of
organisations in November 2014 for investigating
the conditions at sterilisation camps in Bilaspur,
Chattisgarh in which 16 women lost their lives. The
landmark report – Robbed of Choice and Dignity –
Indian Women Dead after Mass Sterilisation details
what went wrong at the camps and what can be done
to see such a situation does not happen ever again.
The recommendations have been widely shared by the
MoHFW with the states resulting in enhancing quality
and choice in family planning services
Convening and working with coalitions and alliances
is one of PFI’s core strengths for advocacy at the
state, national and international levels. PFI is currently
engaged in advocacy to strengthen the government’s
family planning programme in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar
and at the national level in order to realise government
commitments for FP2020.
PFI now hosts the national secretariat of
Advocating Reproductive Choices (ARC), a coalition
of civil society organisations working in the field of
sexual and reproductive rights. ARC makes concerted
and sustained advocacy efforts to enhance quality,
accessibility and expand contraceptive choices.
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Health of the Urban Poor
Health of the Urban Poor (HUP) program, a consortium
led by PFI, has been assisting the government in
developing a systemic response for addressing
health issues of the growing urban poor population
in India. The Government of India has recognised
HUP as a partner for providing support in the NUHM
implementation. HUP seeks to develop a responsive,
functional and sustainable health system that
provides need-based, affordable and accessible
quality healthcare for the urban poor. The approach
is holistic and includes addressing the social
determinants of health including nutrition, water,
sanitation and hygiene. Based on the components of
the NUHM, PFI-HUP has developed an Urban Health
Model and tested its feasibility in five cities.
Informed by its learning, HUP is scaling up its
support to state governments and urban local
bodies for implementing NUHM in 18 cities in eight
EAG states and two mega-million cities. PFI is a
member of the consortium to provide technical
assistance for shaping the 300-million dollar Asian
Development Bank loan to the Government of India
for strengthening the urban health mission.
Main Kuch Bhi Kar Sakti Hoon
I, A Woman can Achieve Anything
To address practices such as sex selection, early
marriage, early and repeated pregnancies, under-
nutrition of girls, domestic violence and sensitisation
of boys, PFI has developed and launched a trans-media
(TV, radio, internet and mobile phone) initiative. The
main component of this initiative is a popular culture
serial tilted Main Kuch Bhi Kar Sakti Hoon - I, A Woman,
Can Achieve Anything. The serial aims to expand
women’s rights and improve their health by changing
deep-seated attitudes and influencing individuals to
change their behaviour.
The serial adopts a 360-degree approach to
behaviour change communication. It starts from
a mass media TV and radio serial that entertains,
provides knowledge and expounds ideal behaviours
through its characters. This is accompanied by
engagement through mobile phones and Interactive
Voice Response System (IVRS) that deliver
information and advice, and provide a platform for
engagement. All this is complemented by group
discussions and community activities through Hum
Kuch Bhi Kar Sakte Hain - We Can Do Anything events,
viewers groups and youth groups. These are reinforced
with one-on-one discussions with facilitators and
frontline health workers. As people hear the same
message from multiple sources, attitudes are
beginning to change and we see evidence of shifts
and transformation in social norms. The end-line
evaluation of Season One of the serial showed
perceptible positive changes in knowledge, awareness
and practices related to reproductive health and
gender issues.
The serial, after a very successful Season One run
of 52 episodes, is now in Season Two, telecast every
weekend at 7.30 pm on Doordarshan National. Season
Two is primarily aimed at adolescent and young people.
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Community Action for Health
PFI works with government and NGO partners to
engage with and empower communities to monitor
the provision of services by the public health
system. This includes generating awareness within
the communities on people’s health entitlements
under the National Health Mission and creating a
platform for dialogue between service providers
and the communities to resolve issues and
improve access and quality of health services. In
2005, MoHFW constituted the Advisory Group
on Community Action (AGCA) under the National
Rural Health Mission (NRHM) to advise the ministry
on community action initiatives. PFI hosts the
Secretariat of the AGCA. Over the last few years,
AGCA has been supporting state governments
in incorporating and scaling up the community
action component in their annual Programme
Implementation Plans.
PFI has a long history of grant making, primarily to
local non-government organisations. Ever since its
inception in 1970, PFI has supported over 350 projects
across India out of its core funds. PFI gives grants to
small organisations that have shown potential and are
implementing innovative projects in PFI’s six thematic
priority areas.
i. delaying age at marriage
ii. delaying age at first pregnancy,
iii. promoting spacing between births,
iv.improving quality of care of family planning
and reproductive health programmes,
v. preventing sex selection, and
vi.promoting non-coercive programmes,
policies and strategies.
The projects supported aim to reach the most
marginalised, vulnerable and underserved communities
where demographic and socio-economic indicators are
poor. The projects typically have a strong component
of community mobilisation and are linked to the
government service delivery system. Project scalability
is also kept in focus. PFI monitors and evaluates the
projects to ensure and improve programme quality,
accountability and institutional learning.
Core Grants
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Scaling Up
PFI’s experience with scaling up is
largely rooted in the application
of the Scaling Up Management
(SUM) framework, developed by
Management Systems International
(MSI). PFI and MSI use the SUM framework in the
Indian context, providing technical support to scale up
innovative public health pilot projects.
Experience has shown that ‘intermediary’
organisations are essential for facilitating the process
of successful scaling up. As an intermediary, PFI has
supported various organisations on:
• SUM framework orientation and its applications
• evidence generation on outcomes and impact
process documentation and cost analysis
• s calability assessment and design of a scaling up plan
• m odifying and strengthening organisations –
systems, structures and capacities, and
• advocacy for legitimisation and adoption of the model
PFI, with the support of MSI, succeeded in getting
the erstwhile Planning Commission of India to examine
and recommend SEARCH’s Home Based Newborn and
Child Care (HBNCC) model as an important strategy to
reduce infant mortality. HBNCC has now been scaled
up under the National Health Mission across the
country.
Currently, PFI is providing technical assistance
to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and
state governments in strengthening scaling up
implementation of Community Action for Health and
specific community process components under the
National Urban Health Mission (NUHM). PFI is also
scaling up its MKBKSH intervention
through dubbing and re-telecast
of Season One in 14 DD Regional
Channels and collaboration with the
Ministry for the national adolescent
health programme.
For more information, we invite you to visit our website
www.populationfoundation.in
Population Foundation of India
B-28, Qutab Institutional Area
Tara Crescent, New Delhi- 110 016, INDIA
Telephone : + 91-11-43894100
Fax: +91-11-43894199
E-mail: info@populationfoundation.in
Website: www.populationfoundation.in
For us, family planning is a matter of
women’s rights and gender justice, of
treating women with dignity. It advances
sexual and reproductive health, saves lives,
and empowers communities, especially
women.
Poonam Muttreja
Executive Director
Population Foundation of India