The International Lactation Consultant Association® (ILCA) Board of Directors is proud to share with you our new strategic map, a living document that will guide our future actions and, thus, the future of our organization.
The strategic map is the result of a journey that ILCA board members and staff have traveled with the goal of ensuring that every effort, project, and program best meet the needs of our members, our profession, and global health.
The strategic map reflects ILCA’s transformative decisions over the past year:
Our Vision and Mission.
After a careful process, ILCA developed a new vision, announced in 2014. Our vision statement explains why our work is important, inspires participation and support, and shows the outcomes we plan to achieve. It goes hand-in-hand with the ILCA mission statement, which remained unchanged, reflecting how ILCA plans to achieve those outcomes.
Our Vision: World health transformed through breastfeeding and skilled lactation care.
Our Mission: To advance the International Board Certified Lactation Consultant (IBCLC) profession worldwide through leadership, advocacy, professional development, and research.
Our Core Values.
We took a hard look at every aspect of ILCA’s work to determine how it aligned with the vision. Three Core Values emerged—the driving forces behind why we do what we do:
Knowledge: We believe knowledge guides our practice, strengthens our value, and supports our role in transforming global health.
Diversity: We foster an inclusive environment that supports leadership, advocacy, professional development, and research from varied perspectives.
Equity: We support global access to skilled lactation care and the IBCLC profession.
Our Areas of Impact.
As we move forward, we will measure each idea, decision, program, and initiative against these Core Values and determine how they will impact our three primary areas of impact: our members, the IBCLC profession, and the world.
Our Goals.
Once our Core Values were established, the need for new goals, better aligned with our new vision and values, became clear. Going forward, all ILCA projects and programs will work toward at least one of the following:
- Provide innovative education and networking.
- Provide access to and interpretation of lactation research.
- Build capacity of future leaders.
- Champion the IBCLC as the premiere lactation credential.
- Advance breastfeeding on the global agenda.
Our Objectives.
To achieve these goals, highly specific objectives were identified to transform global health through breastfeeding and skilled lactation care while advancing the IBCLC. The map is intended to be dynamic and open to changes and improvements so that members have an opportunity to contribute to achieving these outcomes. We also crafted the outcomes to be both measurable and attainable, so we will all know where are going and when we have arrived.
- Create a global platform for networking and communication.
- Create culturally appropriate diversified educational delivery channels.
- Increase access to evidence-based documents that build knowledge and support the IBCLC.
- Implement development process that spans the knowledge of global awareness, organizational excellence, and effective human influence behaviors.
- Develop a marketing plan that encompasses a diversified audience.
- Support IBCLC organizations globally.
- Engage in partnerships with global health leaders and relevant organizations.
- Provide access to expert guidance on breastfeeding as it relates to diverse areas of global concern.
The strategic map is just that—a map to chart our journey. It is not a plan to be left on a shelf to gather dust, but a living document we’ll refer back to for every decision that impacts our organization.
We’ll share with you the complete graphic representation on our new website (watch here for details!). However, we wanted to provide you this advance look here because we’ve found the visual presentation helps to better convey how these components fit together.
We welcome your input on this new journey that has been charted for ILCA and for our profession. Soon, we will be sharing with you how you can be a part of creating a new tomorrow for our profession and the global breastfeeding community. Stay tuned for our next blog post!
Just Wow. A fluid “map,” adaptable objectives and strategies for the professional association AND the IBCLC, a culture of inclusivity. Well done, ILCA. I am proud to be a member.
Under objectives – I would love to have some help with “increase access to evidence based documents that build knowledge and support the IBCLC. ” I have spent the last 6 years expanding the Center for Breastfeeding Information Research Library with research articles from LLLI, Wellstart, Chris Mulford, Kay Hoover, Vergie Hughes and myself. My wish is to make these articles available globally via the internet. I need help obtaining copyright use for this collection, which now totals about 29,000 articles and resources. The articles and resources are data-based and scanned. I need help with accessing new articles as they come out. Funding would be wonderful as I have been spending my children’s inheritance so far .
Great work and shows the dedication of the “volunteer” board of directors … thanks for you time and willingness to move the profession forward …