Oscar Cordon, JHPIEGO, Johns Hopkins university

I am writing from Kabul, Afghanistan where I work as a Technical Director and Deputy Chief of Party for the Service Support Project. This project is an associate award that JHPIEGO is administering for USAID in partnership with Save the Children U.S. and Constella Futures Group.

In September 2000, I attended the Strategic Leadership and Management for Population and Reproductive Health Seminar sponsored by the Gates Institute in Managua, Nicaragua.

With 20 co-workers, I assumed the challenge to replicate the leadership lessons from the seminar to improve the management of a primary health project that JHPIEGO administered for USAID in the highlands in Guatemala. In five years, we were able to teach the skills from the Gates Institue seminar to more than 300 professionals from local NGOs and the Ministry of Public Health.
Now, I have the privilege to repeat the exercise in Afghanistan where we are working with a local team of about 70 people to provide technical assistance to health providers in 13 provinces.Their work has a direct impact in the health conditions of women, families and babies.

The leadership skills that I learned almost seven years ago have allowed me to bring training to a vast number of primary health workers in cities and villages in four different countries (Guatemala, Honduras, Nigeria and Afghanistan).

I have seen how these leadership tools have helped many workers to think broadly, to go beyond their imagination, to continue expanding their levels of knowledge and to better understand the different ways of thinking in the global village where we live today.

Oscar Cordon
JHPIEGO/JHU