At BBC Media Action, sustainability is built into project design from the start. Read more…
At BBC Media Action, sustainability is built into project design from the start. Read more…
Our biggest achievement in terms of sustainability has undoubtedly been the national adoption and roll out of two of the mHealth outputs developed by Shaping Demand and Practices (SDP) project in Bihar – Mobile Academy and Kilkari – by the Government of India in 2015. The national scale-up of these services has gone on to become the largest mHealth programme in the world.
BBC Media Action’s work in Bihar offers insights into a variety of ways partnerships can be formed that foster sustainable business models – and do so at scale. The Shaping Demand and Practices (SDP) project has shown that creating partnerships with civil society platform-managers can encourage lasting delivery of face-to-face communication activities.
The delivery of the Shaping Demand and Practices (SDP) project’s comprehensive communication strategy was underpinned by support designed to strengthen the Government of Bihar’s capacity to work effectively with communication to improve health and also to encourage a sense of ownership of the project outputs.
BBC Media Action pursued partnerships with commercial mobile operators as a route to sustaining mHealth services after donor funding came to an end. There were promising signs that this would be successful as, in the first phase of the project, there had been considerable buy-in from mobile operators, with call costs secured at vastly reduced rates.