Participants working to understand their challenges at a program design workshop.
A successful program begins with solutions that are designed with local stakeholders, not for them. Before implementation begins in its first two Indonesian partner cities, The Challenge Initiative – led by local partner the Jalin Foundation – and BKKBN (the country’s National Family Planning coordinating board) carried out a series of start-up activities to lay the groundwork: two city-level co-design workshops followed by a national Master Training of Trainers (MTOT).
This sequence reflects how TCI works everywhere it operates. Rather than delivering a standardized program, TCI works with the local government to co-design a program that strengthens local health systems and build the capacity of the people who run them – from facility staff and community health workers to the coaches who will guide implementation. Pairing system-level improvements in service delivery, data use, and governance with hands-on skills-building for local leaders helps ensure progress continues long after TCI’s direct program support ends.
The first step was city-specific with Program Co-Design Workshops held in Surabaya (June 17–19) and Depok (June 23–25) to bring together local government agencies, provincial BKKBN offices, health facilities, community health workers (PLKB), and other partners. Each city analyzed its own program gaps and root causes, then developed a locally owned implementation roadmap. Surabaya prioritized strengthening family planning and postpartum family planning services, building community demand, and securing policy and financing support.
Depok focused on provider capacity and service quality, community trust, and stronger governance and cross-sector coordination, while naming challenges such as provider competency gaps, misinformation, and limited involvement of husbands and families in reproductive health decisions. Opening the Depok workshop, Dr. Ruri Mutia Ichwan, MKM, Director of Reproductive Health at BKKBN, noted that family planning is a strategic investment in maternal and child health and stunting prevention, achievable only through a pentahelix approach spanning government, communities, academia, the private sector, media, and development partners.
TCI’s MTOT workshop was held in Bogor, Indonesia.
Once city-level priorities were defined, TCI held a four-day Master Training of Trainers (MTOT) workshop in Bogor from June 30 to July 3. Forty-four participants from BKKBN, the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Home Affairs, provincial BKKBN offices, City Leadership Teams, and TCI came together to prepare Indonesia’s first cohort of Master Coaches to mentor city governments in designing, implementing, and sustaining TCI’s evidence-based programs. Dr. Njeri Nyamu (TCI East Africa) and Hitesh Sahni (TCI India) shared lessons from nearly a decade of TCI implementation, while TCI’s team in Indonesia adapted global approaches to Indonesia’s policy and governance context through coaching simulations, gap analysis, and action planning for Surabaya and Depok.
Together, these start-up activities established both the “what” and the “who” of TCI Indonesia’s launch: city-owned roadmaps grounded in local evidence, and a trained coaching corps ready to support them. As implementation begins, these Master Coaches will serve as the bridge between national policy and local action, helping Surabaya and Depok translate their co-designed plans into practice.
Led globally by the William H. Gates Sr. Institute at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, TCI has supported 217 local governments across Africa and Asia since 2017 in expanding access to family planning and reproductive health services through a locally led, evidence-based, and sustainable approach. This proven model has now been be adapted to the Indonesian context as the country joins 14 other TCI-supported countries to advance family planning to improve the health and well-being of women and their communities.
