In February, we took the first step in shaping a community-driven response to the unprecedented attacks on foreign assistance funding impacting sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) and launched a community needs assessment.
WHGI is committed to action, leveraging our platforms (FPNN, ICFP 2025, PMA, TCI, and more) to drive a coordinated, community-led response. In particular, we want to be sure to align efforts with the momentum of ICFP 2025’s theme: “Equity Through Action: Advancing Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights for All.”
We want to extend a warm “Thank you” to those of you who took the time to complete the needs assessment survey.
Whether or not you are directly impacted by foreign assistance cuts, you provided insights into how professionals involved in different aspects of FP/SRHR work – advocacy, implementation, monitoring, research, service delivery, and others – are grappling with the unexpected challenges. These insights are helping us to shape an advocacy response that is strategic, inclusive, and powerful.
Needs Assessment Overview
In under 3 weeks, we received nearly 400 responses from 58 countries and in 3 different languages (English, French, and Spanish). You can view the main highlights from the survey responses here.
What’s Next
The responses indicated a strong desire for interventions related to advocacy – both through SMART advocacy trainings or refreshers and the collective sharing of resources and tools to mobilize funding to fill gaps and help local authorities to understand the urgent need for FP/SRHR programming. Stay tuned for concrete plans related to this soon, and in the meantime, know that you can always access SMART advocacy resources here.
Other pieces of the rich feedback also demonstrated a strong need for resources such as virtual events, data and insights hubs, media briefings and solutions journalism trainings, stories of impact, and other interventions meant to improve sector-wide coordination during this challenging context. Many of these, and other bold ideas, were discussed at the Future of Family Planning (FFP) Convening in March 2025 in Washington, DC. Read more about the convening’s key takeaways, priorities discussed, resources shared, and access multimedia content from the event, to learn how all of these steps build into the path forward to the Future of Family Planning.
