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Venture Strategies is a nonprofit organization working to improve
the health and well-being of people in low resource countries, by (1) reducing
barriers that inhibit women from having access to options about their
childbearing; (2) supporting the availability of promising health technologies
that have potential for large scale impact around the
world; and (3) increasing
understanding of the feasibility of slowing population growth within a
voluntary, human rights framework. Misoprostol was our initial focus when, at the request of three leading African obstetricians, we facilitated in 6 countries, starting with Nigeria, drug regulatory approval of this off-patent tablet for saving mothers’ lives from hemorrhage after childbirth. Having now spun off a partner organization Venture Strategies Innovations, which is continuing to implement most of our misoprostol work in 14 countries (see Projects), we are focusing on: 1) International Population Dialogue We are using research to help governments and policy makers understand the feasibility of slowing population growth by purely voluntary means, and the importance of the population factor in development, health, education, food security, and environmental sustainability. We are also clarifying the wide range of unnecessary barriers to standing between women and their ability to manage whether and when to have a child. 2) Health Policy In many of the less developed countries both health care and family planning are constrained by unjustified barriers in the form of medical rules often inadvertently put in place by government ministries. We are building the case for shifting many medical tasks to people the community level where doctors and nurses are scarce. In addition, we feel strongly that poor women should not be exposed to the dangers and exploitation of unsafe abortion. 3) New Philanthropy Since Venture Strategies was created in 2001, we have been redefining how a U.S. nonprofit working internationally should function, and what it should be able to achieve by leveraging donor funds. In our work in New Philanthropy we have been sorting out the effectiveness of different types of donor support for international projects, clarifying the benefits of selecting specific pathways to achievement under a variety of circumstances. ![]() To qualify as a venture strategy, a project must have reasonable odds of achieving helpful systemic change in one or more developing countries on a significant scale in the near term, using opportunities offered by existing market structures. In doing this, a venture strategy is creating, implementing and/or expediting a selected lever on change. ![]()
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Announcing AFIDEP Venture Strategies for Health and Development is pleased to announce the creation of AFIDEP, the African Institute for Development Policy based in Nairobi, Kenya.
AFIDEP was founded by Dr. Eliya Msiyaphazi Zulu, one of Africa's premier
demographers. One key element of AFIDEP's work will involve helping policy
makers, including those in the ministries of planning and finance, as well as
foreign aid agencies, to have a clearer understanding of the population growth
factor in health and development. The initial support for the establishment of
AFIDEP has been provided by Venture Strategies.
We are happy to announce that our partner organization Venture Strategies Innovations (VSI) has a new web site, and you will find this at http://www.vsinnovations.org/.
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