Grants and Contributions

With GAC’s support, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) helps provide lifesaving sexual and reproductive health services and protection in the West Bank and Gaza.

Indonesia faces a critical challenge in safeguarding the health and well-being of mothers and newborns. Despite having over 344,000 registered midwives in 2023, a 16% increase from the previous year, the nation grapples with an extremely high maternal mortality rate. The 2020 census revealed a Maternal Mortality Ratio (MMR) of 189 per 100,000 live births. This places Indonesia among the top three countries with the highest MMR in Southeast Asia, a stark contrast to regional peers like Singapore with an MMR of just 7. Midwives are often the cornerstone of maternal healthcare in Indonesia, particularly in rural and remote areas where access to doctors and hospitals is limited. By enhancing their capacity and professionalism, this project aims to empower these frontline healthcare providers and contribute to a significant reduction in maternal mortality.

Strengthening regulatory frameworks will ensure greater accountability and standardization across midwifery training institutions. This involves supporting evidence-based development of national regulations to improve accreditation processes and elevate the quality of midwifery education. By establishing clear national standards, the project aims to address inconsistencies in midwifery graduates' skills, as highlighted by fluctuating pass rates in national competency tests since 2015.

Enhancing pre-service education will equip midwives with the knowledge and skills to deliver high-quality reproductive, maternal, newborn, child, and adolescent health services. This includes updating and strengthening curricula to reflect international best practices, particularly in crucial areas like emergency obstetric and newborn care. The project will also prioritize equipping midwives with the skills to respond effectively in humanitarian crises, a critical need in disaster-prone Indonesia.

Pakistan is the fifth most populous country in the world and faces significant challenges in ensuring the sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) of its population, particularly for women and adolescent girls. The project aims to address these challenges by strengthening the healthcare infrastructure to provide comprehensive integrated SRH care, improve access to family planning, enhance the capacity of health care workers and service providers, and address cultural norms that impede progress, through supporting a rights-based approach to SRHR and the implementation of related policies and commitments.

This project aims to enable adolescent girls to experience healthier, safer, and more empowered life transition into adulthood by 2030. Project activities include: (1) building the capacity of adolescent girls to exercise their rights and demand services related to their sexual and reproductive health; (2) engaging men, boys, and communities to support gender equality and the rights of adolescent girls; (3) ensuring the availability of commodities and supplies in local health facilities; (4) building the capacity of service providers at multiple levels to ensure availability of quality services related to gender-based prevention and response, social protection, and social justice; (5) addressing policy implementation, regulatory and accountability bottlenecks; (6) strengthening the capacity of institutions and regulatory bodies to coordinate and standardize delivery of quality services; and (7) encouraging meaningful participation of young people to demand accountability. The project targets 400,000 married and unmarried adolescent girls as direct beneficiaries, with special attention given to migrant girls and girls with disabilities. It is implemented in the Volta, Ashanti, Eastern and Northern regions of Ghana.

The project will help lower rates of adolescent pregnancy, and allow girls and young women in Belize and Suriname to realize their sexual and reproductive health and rights. The project will have positive impacts on adolescents and young people across both countries, but will focus on indigenous and tribal adolescent girls and young women in select regions of Belize and Suriname. The project will do this by making clinics more adolescent-friendly and culturally appropriate; increasing access to contraceptives; implementing an out-of-school comprehensive sexuality education curriculum to reach indigenous and tribal adolescents in their communities; creating and using culturally appropriate educational materials; and gathering and using data to help policymakers make informed decisions about advancing adolescent sexual and reproductive health and rights, particularly for indigenous and tribal groups.

This grant represents Canada’s long-term institutional support to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). The UNFPA uses these funds, along with other donors’ funding, to achieve its mandate.

The initiative proposed by UNFPA aims to improve the use of SRH, FP and GBV services by women and girls aged 15 to 49 in the targeted areas. To do this, the project will improve the gender literacy of men, women, leaders and youth through campaigns promoting gender equality and positive masculinity clubs. The project also plans to improve the life skills of women and girls through empowerment programs and training to detect the signs of obstetric emergencies. UNFPA will also work to improve the technical and operational skills of health facilities so that they are able to offer integrated SRH, FP and GBV services.
In order to better protect women and girls in the project's communities of intervention, the technical and operational capacities of public structures for the registration and issuance of civil status documents will be improved and the populations will be made aware of the systematic registration of civil status events, particularly births. To prevent and better respond to GBV, UNFPA will work with community-based health providers and health workers to improve their skills in holistic survivor care while strengthening their referral and reporting capacities.
Finally, through the development of "green" initiatives such as the manufacture of household items from plastic waste, the provision of improved stoves, training in soilless cultivation, the awareness of IDPs and host communities, and the implementation of cultural activities or joint projects such as the development of the community environment, the project will contribute to improving the culture of peace. solidarity and peaceful resolution of community conflicts. Agents of the defence and security forces in the project's area of intervention will also be trained on human rights and gender.

The project aims to promote peace and stability in conflict-affected states.

The project intends to promote universal health coverage and improve access to essential and lifesaving sexual and reproductive health interventions to people of Sudan, this will be achieved through a well-articulated approach that targets strengthening the heath system building blocks in accordance with the National health policy 2020, and the national reproductive health policy. Strengthening the six-health system building blocks as defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) offers a useful planning framework to inform the inclusion of comprehensive SRH services into a primary healthcare package and reinforcement of other comprehensive SRH services at the higher levels of care. These blocks encompass service delivery, the health workforce, health information system, medical commodities, financing, and governance and leadership

The EmpowerED project aims to improve access to gender-transformative comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) for an estimated 7.5 million adolescents and youth. It seeks to focus on 10 countries, including Argentina, Benin, Colombia, Ethiopia, Ghana, Malawi, Moldova, Philippines, Tunisia, and Zambia. EmpowerED works globally and locally to increase the availability, accessibility, and quality of CSE content and delivery. It aims to accelerate and scale-up CSE programs in the 10 focus countries and foster effective coordination and linkages with sexual and reproductive health rights (SRHR) and gender-based violence (GBV) services. The project also seeks to leverage civil society networks and partnerships to strengthen advocacy, protect and advance knowledge generation and management, and enhance technical collaboration on CSE.