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Tim Wirth visits
On June 1, the Coalition Secretariat
received a special visit from Senator Tim Wirth, President of the United
Nations (UN) Foundation, along with his colleague Melinda Kimble, Senior
Vice President and his wife Wren, President of
the Winslow Foundation. The Senator
is known to many in the RH field, particularly for his involvement at the
International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in 1994 and
the 2001 Istanbul Conference, “Meeting the Challenge”. His visit formed part of a two-week trip
to Europe where he engaged in many
high-level meetings mainly on the current key issue of climate change.
Secretariat staff updated the visitors on current Coalition
priorities and activities, including, at Wirth’s request, a closer
look at the Pledge and Minimum Volume Guarantee mechanisms. KfW consultant Sandra Rolet
was invited to discuss the Coalition’s work on that front.
Wirth encouraged the Coalition to engage with the HIV/AIDS
community, which he said was looking for more effective integration with
the broader RH field. He also
recommended seeking out opportunities for closer collaboration with the
philanthropic community. The UN Foundation, established
in 1997, is a permanent member of the Coalition.
Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) Planning Committee launches
In April, the Executive Committee
approved a USAID-sponsored concept paper summarizing key themes and issues
to be addressed at the next October membership meeting. The paper described a forum in which
guests from Latin America could share
successes and achievements in contraceptive security (CS), assist others to
learn from these experiences, and identify ways the Coalition could support
further CS efforts.
On May 18, efforts to operationalize the concept paper got underway with a
two-hour planning meeting/teleconference among USAID collaborating agencies
and the Coalition Secretariat.
Despite the forum’s geographic focus on LAC, participants
agreed on the need to highlight themes and issues of global
significance. They also took note of
requests to include within the agenda, topics such as pricing of the female
condom and the new RMA Advocacy Toolkit.
The next meeting of the LAC Planning Committee will take place later
this month.
Strategic Plan nears completion
The Secretariat has incorporated the
results of last April’s membership meeting into the working draft of
the Coalition’s new Strategic Plan.
Input included minutes from the individual breakout sessions as well
as transcriptions of each group’s feedback presentation at plenary.
Also included were comments submitted by the World Bank and others
subsequent to the meeting. The new
draft was then forwarded to the three Working Group Chairs and other
contributors for validation and, where necessary, subsequent editing.
With this process now complete, the final step in the strategy formulation
process remains the refinement of indicators. To that end, a technical meeting of
monitoring and evaluation (M&E) specialists will be held next month in Washington, DC
to look at indicators and enlist the support of partner agencies in
establishing baselines and monitoring indicators.
Addressing membership
Efforts to address membership are moving forward. In keeping with the approach used to
develop the Coalition’s Strategic Plan, a task force has been
identified, comprising four volunteers (Valerie De Fillipo,
Carolyn Hart, Nel
Druce and Susan Rich),
an independent consultant (David Johnson of HLSP), and Coalition Director,
John Skibiak. The task force will be
headed by Co-Chair Wolfgang Bichmann and will also involve input from a
former Coalition member, Steve Sinding. A scope of work and timeline for
the task force is currently under preparation; the first teleconference of
the group will be scheduled for early June.
For more information, please contact the
Secretariat
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New Communications
Officer starts in Brussels
Catherine Potter, formerly Communications Director at SCA
Packaging, has just joined the Secretariat as Communications Officer. Catherine brings with her a wealth of
communications-related experience from the business world and
publishing/journalism. Catherine (cpotter@path.org)
replaces Cécile Petit-Robert who left mid-May to have a baby. |
Latest materials now on the Web
Contents of the Coalition’s seventh semi-annual
membership meeting held in
London
on April 27–28 have been posted on
the website. This includes the agenda,
presentations, reports of the breakout sessions and the evaluation
survey. The minutes and summary of
the Executive Committee meeting will be posted to the website shortly.
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Sad to see Marian go
Marian Weldin of the Secretariat at PATH/Seattle retired at
the end of May after 19 years at PATH. While we are sad that she will no longer be working with us, we are very
grateful for all her contributions to the Coalition. Her dedication and support has helped get
us off to a good start and has brought good fortune to the Coalition and
the Secretariat. We wish her all the
best in retirement. |
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