Part 1: Boldness. ACTION Partnership Meeting in DC: October 16-19

ACTION partners from the UK, Canada, India, Kenya, France, Australia, Japan, and US are meeting in Washington, DC from October 17-19. Day #1 has been exciting. The day started out with a review of ACTION’s strategic plan goals and quickly moved to some blue sky thinking on what would change the world in 2013 around global health. Forty-six ideas emerged around themes of nutrition, engaging new partners, rethinking the global health architecture, mobilizing new resources in a global economic slow down, and creating a compelling vision for a world with full access to healthcare. 

The group then dug in on six issues:

• Nutrition: what part of the nutrition issue might we take on to have the most impact? Where would new resources come from?
• Partnerships: how do we create a more deliberate process for building deep partnerships? Key elements include budget, criteria, process.
• Expanding into the BRICS countries, and what would that look like. BRICS countries include Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa.
• Creating champions: Can we map out what we have, what we need, define a process for developing champions, and making sure it’s incorporated into our strategic conversations?
• Training: can we create the training tools and capacity needed to be able to offer our special abilities in advocacy to others in order to build our base?
• Expanding the grassroots: can we expand the number of voices and where they are in our grassroots base? What does the on-ramp to do this look like? How do we find more “pre-qualified” advocates?

We also talked about the incredible opportunity we have with the new World Bank president. Can we help transform the World Bank to achieve outcomes more in alignment with its mission? What key strategies do we need to create in order to drive change at the World Bank.

By 3 pm we were on to Global Fund replenishment for 2013. How do we ensure bold pledges needed are delivered? We are looking at: 1) The new Global Fund model, 2) Replenishment funding target, 3) 2013 campaign around the Global Fund.

The work during this exciting retreat will share our grassroots agenda for 2013 on global health. You are part of something bigger–a plan to change the world!