ILCA Global Partners Initiative: Bridging Vision and Reality

Organizations around the world – from established international organizations to emerging national and regional groups – are all working toward improving breastfeeding outcomes. Imagine the impact if these groups had a way to link together goals, break down barriers, and pursue common objectives.

As a part of ILCA’s ongoing efforts to foster a global agenda, on 22 July 2015, ILCA will officially launch the ILCA Global Partners Initiative at the inaugural ILCA Partners Meeting.

This meeting represents the realization of an effort begun nearly a year ago when the ILCA Board of Directors proudly announced a new organizational vision: World Health Transformed through Breastfeeding and Skilled Lactation Care.

Background

Implementation of the new ILCA vision began with a commitment to two goals: expansion of formal relationships with global partners and development assistance for emerging breastfeeding organizations.

In addition to nurturing formal relations with international breastfeeding organizations (WHO, UNICEF, WABA, etc.), ILCA committed to expanding formal partnerships with like-minded membership organizations throughout the global breastfeeding community (USLCA, ELACTA, JALC, etc.).

At the same time, ILCA recognized an urgent need to facilitate the growth and development of small groups of breastfeeding advocates who were not yet self-sufficient. Over the past several months, ILCA has formed new partnerships with several national and regional breastfeeding organizations and opened a dialogue with numerous emerging organizations.

During this process, ILCA has recognized a new and unique opportunity to significantly impact breastfeeding and skilled lactation care on a global scale—bridging the gap between vision and reality.

ILCA aims to facilitate dialogue and create new linkage among partner organizations at the international, national, regional and local level. Our goal: creating new synergies that support international programs while simultaneously elevating the needs of emerging breastfeeding organizations.

While many international organizations have regional representatives throughout the world, they often lack the infrastructure to successfully implement programs and objectives or to fully grasp the local needs. Through its multi-tiered collaborative global network, ILCA is growing the capacity and capability to provide that much-needed infrastructure to bridge global intentions with local needs.

Meeting Objectives

While the inaugural ILCA Partners Meeting will afford ILCA Partners the first opportunity to meet face-to-face, we anticipate this meeting will become a keystone event associated with all future ILCA Annual Conferences.

Key Objectives:

1. Introduce the key components, members, and potential of the new global breastfeeding collaboration.
2. Highlight several key international objectives that may benefit from this new collaboration.
3. Identify some of the major organizational development barriers for emerging breastfeeding organizations.
4. Identify 2-3 objectives the collaboration may wish to address.

Bridging Vision and Reality

While every organization has its own agenda and unique needs, ILCA sees a unique opportunity for the lactation community to speak with one voice that furthers the global breastfeeding agenda.

It is our hope that by creating the space for dialogue and collaboration among all of those in the breastfeeding community, we can bridge the gap between today’s reality and our collective vision for tomorrow.

Want to learn more? Leave us a message in the comments or contact ILCA Executive Director, Dick Padlo via email at executivedirector@ilca.org.