Introduction

PMNCH is the world’s largest alliance for women’s, children’s and adolescents’ health and well-being.

Our vision is a world in which every woman, child and adolescent is able to realize their right to health and well-being, leaving no one behind. Our mission is to mobilize, align and amplify the voices of partners to advocate for women’s, children’s and adolescents’ health and well-being, particularly the most vulnerable.

With advocacy as our core function – supported by knowledge synthesis, partner engagement, campaigns and outreach – we mobilize and resource our partners to seek changes in policy, financing and services for women, children and adolescents, and we hold each other accountable for delivering on our promises.

PMNCH membership reached 1250 in 2021, an annual increase of 17%. Of the 183 new member organizations, 126 come from low- and middle-income countries, including 77 from the African Region. This rapid growth demonstrates wider recognition of the urgent need for collective action to improve access to essential health services, uphold rights and address the inequities embedded in all areas of our societies and economies. 

This report summarizes PMNCH’s key achievements and outputs in 2021, the first year of our current five-year strategy (Figure 1).

Helen Clark, Board Chair

"As an international community, we need policy and financing actions that enhance equity and put women, children and adolescents at the centre. In this context, what we do at PMNCH is very important. In 2021, we saw the results of our joined-up efforts: working across our 10 constituencies, we were successful in supporting an additional nine national governments in developing and sharing written commitments to ensure women, children and adolescents are explicit in pandemic recovery plans, aligning with the PMNCH Call to Action on COVID-19. But our work does not end here. In the coming year, we will follow up through our 1250+ strong partnership to ensure that promises are kept and that commitments are meaningful, especially to the most vulnerable. We hope that when people look back at this moment in time – approaching halfway to 2030 and our SDG targets – they can say: 2022 was the year when we rallied to address this final lap and when our collective resolve for progress was renewed."

theory of change and results framework