Four Cities in Benin and Niger Celebrate Graduating from TCI’s Direct Support

Three cities in Benin – Abomey-Calavi, Cotonou and UCOZ – and one in Niger –  Niamey – celebrated their graduation in June 2022 from The Challenge Initiative’s (TCI’s) direct support due to their achievements to date. During graduation ceremonies in all four cities, both the municipality and health system stakeholders highlighted TCI’s success in bringing these often-siloed stakeholders together, then strengthening their capacity to implement TCI’s high-impact family planning and adolescent and youth sexual and reproductive health (AYSRH)  interventions.

City mayors presided over the ceremonies, which offered another opportunity for TCI to recognize the efforts made by the three Benin cities and the city of Niamey. In five years of collaboration with UCOZ, four years with Abomey-Calavi, two and a half years with Cotonou and four years with Niamey, these cities significantly improved access to family planning services for the urban poor.

Now that direct support from TCI has ended, all four mayors recommitted themselves to continuing their efforts to mobilize local resources to ensure the sustainability of the high-impact interventions by maintaining funding for family planning and AYSRH programming in municipal budgets going forward. They also committed to regular monitoring and follow-up to ensure the disbursement of these resources. Each city has now established advocacy and monitoring groups to support this mission.

Each ceremony concluded with the mayors being awarded graduation banners while the Departmental Health Directorates and Health Zones received certificates. All four graduated cities Abomey-Calavi, Cotonou, UCOZ and Niamey now join TCI “alumni” cities and will benefit from on-demand coaching as requested.

View photos from the ceremonies below: