PLA Notes 37 February 2000 7 Collaborative planning to improve women's health

Document begins: PLA Notes 37 February 2000 7 Collaborative planning to improve women's health Carla Rull Boussen ! focusing and expansion of NGO efforts in ! Introduction women's health in Egypt. Since the mid 1980s, we have been working to This article will briefly describe the ensure that people are involved at each step of collaborative planning process using examples the development process, from programme from our work in Beni Suef, a governorate1 in design to evaluation. Through planning Upper Egypt. workshops, we have brought together communities, non-governmental organisations ! Background (NGOs), and government staff and officials to develop plans for improving women's health. The Beni Suef initiative was designed to help While in almost all cases, the efforts have been Egyptian NGOs have the most impact possible considered successful and the resulting in improving the reproductive health of programmes indeed better than they would Egyptian women. The first part of the strategy have been without the input of the various was to get NGOs working on priority issues in actors, we have been concerned that the which significant impact was indeed possible. resulting plans were not as good as they This involved identifying the most important perhaps could have ...