By Karl Hofmann, President and CEO, PSI
From 36,000 feet above the Atlantic, I’m thinking about PSI’s future.
I am flying back after visiting PSI operations in India and Pakistan. Our work in these countries today looks different than where we once were when PSI began, 50 years ago. Development is different today. It’s on us, together, to adapt our footing to meet the needs of our host governments, our health consumers, and our donors.
And still, amidst PSI’s changes, the core of our approach is constant: we’re #LocallyRootedGloballyConnected. With multiple entities in country – social businesses, independent network members, PSI branch offices, network members – along with increasing partnerships and steadfast global services, our network shows up and executes for health consumers, leveraging our global expertise to deliver quality programming.
I wrote recently about PSI’s history of co-founding high-performing national health organizations that are independent from us, but still strongly aligned with us and our work.
Here’s what I saw on the ground in India and Pakistan.
India: An independent NGO and commercial entity
In India, where PSI operated for more than 35 years, much of our operating infrastructure shifted in 2021 to become a new independent NGO. PSI India (a name their leaders will either choose to keep, or change) is governed by an all-Indian Board of Directors (as it had been before) and led by an all-Indian team (as it has been for a long while) but is now completely separate from PSI’s financial management and oversight from the PSI Global Office in Washington. PSI India continues to partner with PSI to scout new business opportunities but is already receiving direct funding from major donors to implement cutting-edge health strategies in India, including essential work on urban health delivery.
Alongside the independent PSI India is PSI India Private Limited, a commercial entity still financially consolidated with PSI that manages an Indian contraceptive marketing operation adhering to commercial requirements. The “IPL” structure also serves as a grant manager for donor funding that flows from PSI in Washington to implementing partners in India, international and local – all in compliance with India’s evolving foreign currency controls.
Like the independent NGO, PSI’s IPL is 100 percent Indian-led and staffed. The IPL is working with the Indian Government on landscaping of the health marketplace and helping to bring the mixed Indian health sector, public and private, toward the government’s vision for Universal Health Coverage.
Pakistan: An independent NGO and a branch office
In Pakistan, the picture is also multidimensional.
PSI’s long-standing implementing partner in Pakistan is Greenstar Social Marketing (Pakistan), Ltd, an independent NGO that has led the development of contraceptive markets there and whose work contributes about one-third of total modern contraception in Pakistan.
PSI co-founded Greenstar in the early 1990s, along with visionary Pakistani pioneers. Greenstar has always been fully independent from PSI, but Greenstar remains a leading provider of family planning impact across the global PSI community.
More recently, PSI has also established a branch office in Pakistan, PSI/Pakistan, which works with Greenstar and other partners to manage donor awards and to help the Pakistani authorities, at provincial and federal level, to advance their health systems strengthening agenda with a focus on technical assistance and grant management.
The PSI Modern Global Enterprise: Locally Rooted, Globally Connected
As India and Pakistan show—and our presence across PSI’s 40+ countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America further underscores – this multiplicity of on-the-ground entities is how PSI is evolving our Global Network, purposefully and strategically.
We’re adapting our footing to better respond to what our host governments, our health consumers and our donors want and expect from us: deep local roots; global expertise; power and decisions located as close as possible to their impact, and always mindful of global standards, learning and shared experiences.
#LocallyRootedGloballyConnected is an approach we’ve pursued for 50 years, and it’s the cornerstone of our Modern Global Enterprise into the future.
