Poverty Reduction
SSD will initiate programs to alleviate poverty by providing quality and cost effective microfinance services to low income households, especially women, in order to enhance their economic role and decision-making capacity. SSD will empower poor women and their families to become economically self reliant by providing financial services in a sustainable manner. We promote economic self-actualization by providing the poor with continuous economic opportunities so they can realize their potential and overcome barriers of poverty. SSD believes access to financial services is the basic right of each and every individual..JPG)
Increase awareness and access regarding maternal, newborn and child health services
The situation of maternal, newborn and child health in Pakistan is one of the poorest in South Asia. Despite some improvements in the 1990s, Pakistan has lagged behind many of it neighbors in terms of health and population outcomes. The infant mortality rate of 78 per 1000 live births and a recently calculated maternal mortality rate of 276 per 100,000 live births are both higher than other neighboring South Asian countries.
Very high fertility rates, a high unmet need for family planning and very low rates of skilled birth attendance are some of the fundamental underlying causes for the poor health of women and children in Pakistan.
SSD will take a holistic approach for improving maternal and newborn health, which ranges from interventions within the community, within the public and private sector, and with district health systems. The community BCC and mobilization component will be incorporated to improve families’ awareness about maternal and newborn health issues. This communication and mobilization strategy will closely linked with a second component which will seek to improve access to and the quality of public and private sector health care delivery at the district level.
Increase awareness and build capacity regarding basic human rights and rights based approaches
Increase awareness and build capacity regarding basic human rights and rights based approaches .The human rights situation in Pakistan remains poor with numerous incidents of human rights violations against women,children, minorities and vulnerable and marginalized groups like MSM, FSWs and Transgenders, reported daily in the newspapers and TV channels.
There is general lack of awareness regarding basic human rights among the rights holders as well duty bearers. Even the civil society organizations implementing interventions for disadvantaged and marginalized communities have little capacity and understanding about deployment of rights based approaches.
All the interventions of SSD whether they are in the field of health, poverty or education, will be based on the principles of rights based approaches. Along with that SSD will support and build the capacity of civil society organizations and NGO in understanding the principles and guidelines through its capacity building program.
Prevention and Control of communicable diseases including HIV, hepatitis, TB and malaria
The last few years have seen rapid increase in thee prevalence of HIV and hepatitis in Pakistan and return of TB. According to the latest figures every 12th person in Pakistan is Hepatitis positive. Only a few years ago Pakistan was categorized as a low prevalence country for HIV. But prevalence increased steeply and now Pakistan has a concentrated epidemic with HIV prevalence among IDU at 27% and among MSM at 4%..JPG)
Pakistan also has 7th highest disease burden of TB in the world. There is significant risk of escalation of these communicable diseases and reaching the status of generalized epidemics. The spread of these communicable diseases threatens to imbalance and destroy the whole health services structure in Pakistan if not checked now. Lack of capacity, lack of access to services, socio cultural barriers and norms, stigma and discriminations have slowed down the response to HIV, TB and Hepatitis.
Working for the prevention and control of these communicable diseases is one of the major strategic objectives of SSD. SSD will achieve this objective through provision of services, reduction of stigma and discrimination, building capacity of NGOs, advocacy and meaningful involvement of the vulnerable and marginalized communities.
Building Capacity of civil society organizations and NGO in best practice
SSD has a demonstrated considerable national capacity building capability. It has a pool of experts available within its membership, its staff and associated volunteers, who have vast experience of conducting capacity building workshops and developing manuals on number of topics including MNCH, HIV & AIDS, Social Mobilization, Community Mobilization, Behaviour Change Communication, Interpersonal Communication, media Advocacy, Rights Based Approaches, Financial Management of Projects, Project Cycle Management along with many Others.
SSD has significant monitoring and evaluation capacity and will provide its members with capacity building support, to the limits of its resources. Important in this regard, will be support to scaling up the best practices in rights based approaches with vulnerable and marginalized communities, and ensuring that developing best practice, whether context specific or international, is made as widely available as possible Increase access to information and evidence base.
Supporting linkages coordination and networking
SSD will work to improve linkage and coordination between and within the NGO and CBO community, and with other parties such as government, Development Partners and the corporate sector. SSD will support and strengthen existing networks and will work for enhancing accountability and transparency within the networks. SSD will make specific efforts to improve the relationships between bigger and smaller NGOs, between NGOs in different sectors of development,
and between NGOs and other sectors. Linkage and coordination between the disadvantaged, vulnerable, marginalized and disempowered communities themselves, and their counterparts throughout Pakistan and in other countries in the region, will also be a priority.
Participatory Policy and Advocacy
SSD aims strengthen its policy engagement and impact, developing significantly greater policy analysis skills and capacity to monitor and communicate spending targets and delivery of commitments against a robust evidence base. This will strengthen their impact and add considerable value for the membership and for mechanisms such as the TACAs and the CCM; SSD also aims to develop a stronger understanding of advocacy strategy and campaigning,
and how to segment their targets in order to influence, brief and inform each group in an appropriate and effective way. Part of this will be evidenced through stronger, more targeted publications, briefings and other communications. For example, SSD intends to provide Secretariat Services at the decentralized and federal levels to be made available specifically to networks working for different vulnerable and marginalized groups of society.