Pact

Pact's e-newsletter offers the latest on our efforts around the world to build thriving, resilient and engaged communities that are leading their own development.

Chile Makayi, a Mentor Mother with the Zambia Integrated Health project, counsels a client at a rural health facility. Credit: Brian Clark/Pact It is a bright, sunny day in Solwezi, a town in the northwestern part of Zambia. Health care workers and clients mill about Muzabula Clinic, a local health facility that provides critical services such as HIV treatment, maternal and newborn health care, malaria treatment, and more. Chile Makayi is getting ready to see her first client of the day.

On Tuesday, July 28, Pact will host a satellite session in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil as part of the 26th International AIDS Conference. The session will focus on how partners have consolidated public sector and civil society efforts to ensure access to lifesaving HIV testing and linkage to care during the ongoing war in Ukraine. Ukraine has one of Eastern Europe's highest HIV burdens, with over 250,000 people living with HIV. Russia's full-scale war has severely damaged the health system.

Pact's e-newsletter offers the latest on our efforts around the world to build thriving, resilient and engaged communities that are leading their own development.

In this Policy Commentary article for the Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network, Pact President & CEO Dennis Vega explores critical questions about the consolidation of USAID and U.S. foreign assistance into the State Department. Vega writes that as U.S. foreign assistance is consolidated into the State Department, we must ensure that this new structure strengthens global development.

At 60 years old, Patricia Mulenga is a powerful example of resilience, hope, and community leadership. A resident of Zambia’s Serenje District, Patricia is living with HIV and has been on antiretroviral therapy (ART) for more than 28 years. She continues to thrive while inspiring others around her. Patricia currently collects her medication from Muililma Rural Health Centre, located in the heart of Serenje District.

A gold miner at the Beava Mine in Bibiani, Ghana. Credit: James McQuilken/Pact “Precious! Minerals! Cocoa! Ghana!” These were the call and response phrases echoing around a tiled room during a recent workshop in Bibiani, Ghana. The event, a collaboration among Pact, Solidaridad, and the Ghana Farmer’s Cocoa Association’s (GFCA), was designed to bring artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) and cocoa farming communities together.

An artisanal miner in the Tanga region of Tanzania shows rough gemstones dug from the earth. Credit: Michael Goima/Pact For Salma Juma Mode, making a living was never easy. For years, her main source of income has been gemstone mining in Tanzania’s Umba Valley, a gem-rich area in northeast Tanga Region. Like many gemstone miners, Salma has never been part of a big operation.

Christine de Guzman working from a makeshift stand-up desk in Pact's Ukraine office in late 2017. In the realm of global development, program operations isn’t always thought of as an area of technical expertise in the way that health, education, or governance are, for example. Christine de Guzman, who has managed programs at Pact for 12 years, rejects that notion.

Svitlana Pakulko has spent her career strengthening the often-invisible systems that allow civil society to function, adapt, and endure, even under extraordinary pressure. Trained as an accountant, Pakulko began her career at the Ukraine office of the International Center for Nonprofit Law, a U.S.-based NGO that, at the time, was supporting the development of new legislation for civil society across Ukraine and other former Soviet republics.