I’m enormously proud of the impact Living Goods-supported CHWs delivered in 2021, despite grappling with numerous challenges in the second full year of the global pandemic.

Most exciting, we just received the preliminary results from our second Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) in Uganda, which evidences an estimated 30% under five (U5) reduction in child mortality and a 27% reduction in infant mortality. This again proves what we’ve long known to be true: properly supported CHWs save lives. And research is an enormously powerful tool for validating what does and doesn’t work and allows us to improve and course-correct.

I’m delighted to see the increased impact we supported two counties in Kenya to deliver through innovative co-financed approaches to community health that are designed to make government both the owner and investor. We helped government develop the first national digital tool for CHWs, based on our Smart Health app, which we are now supporting to pilot in Kisumu.

Although still nascent and in a very complex environment, I’m also very proud we inked a 3-year Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) in Burkina Faso, and of the strides we’ve already made in helping a government in a very different context digitize their entire community health system and establish a performance management framework that better supports the country’s 18,000 CHWs.

This was also a year filled with significant challenges and learnings. With Kenya the proving ground of our new strategic plan, we had to make difficult operational and organizational changes to better support our government partners. Given the promise of helping drive community health at national scale, we made the tough decision to transition back to government our support of direct service delivery in several counties. While they’ll ultimately be supported through the national eCHIS rollout, we acknowledge the reality that communities there will likely face some service disruptions in the short-term.

Our new strategy also required a review of our organization design. About 100 staff across Living Goods were affected by way of job changes, with most of the impact felt in Kenya. While many colleagues were able to secure new or significantly changed roles, and we did our level best to provide a soft landing for those who became redundant, this was hard for us all, and it affected morale for many. But thanks to several employee engagement initiatives throughout the year, we registered strong scores in our all-staff Voices Survey conducted in November 2021, with improvements made across all of the survey’s engagement indices.

And, of course, COVID continued to present substantial challenges. The rising global vaccination numbers in wealthier countries have been met by equally powerful surges of COVID cases in those with fewer means. That said, we have prioritized ensuring our staff and the CHWs we support are protected. Among our team, 92% in Kenya, 77% in Uganda, and 100% in Burkina Faso and the US were fully vaccinated as of January 2022. We still have inroads to make among CHWs, but at least 20% of CHWs in Uganda and 70% in Kenya were fully vaccinated in that same period.

Another significant challenge was dealing with financial fraud. As we transparently shared with our key partners in much greater detail, we were disturbed to uncover that a former staff member embezzled money from us. Although we recovered all the funds, it was a sobering catalyst to strengthen even further our already strong financial controls. After uncovering a hacking scheme that targeted several senior staff, we also made key improvements in our IT security systems and controls.

Looking ahead, there’s so much to be excited about in 2022. We’ve already hit the ground running. It’s the first year of our bold, new strategic plan. We remain relentlessly focused on learning and adaptation so that government partners can drive even greater impact at scale.

We’ll also continue to strengthen our organizational effectiveness and leadership to deliver that impact effectively and efficiently. We continue to build and localize our Board of Directors and executive leadership. I’m also hopeful this year will enable increased face-to-face interactions and, hopefully, the ability to look at COVID through the rearview mirror.

Thanks to all of you who continue to walk this journey with us to improve health outcomes for families. You have enabled us to achieve tremendous results, weather challenging storms, and increase our resilience on the road ahead. I’m excited for all we will achieve together in 2022 and beyond.

Liz Jarman

Chief Executive Officer