In relation to this topic, I think the challenges around partnership is to find agencies that are committed to bringing about change. I think some of the other speakers have spoken about it. It's one thing having a policy; it's another thing having people who are committed to bringing about change. I spent a long time working in Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean. I've worked in Asia as well. I suspect it's one of those sad truths of development that you often get to the capital city of a developing country and everybody is quite bright and committed, and the further away you get from that, there's a breakdown in reach and scale.
We always try to target poor and excluded communities. I was being honest with you. A challenge is finding partners who are committed to working with us in those poor areas. So it's relatively easy, say, in Dar es Salaam in Tanzania to find big strong organizations that want to speak out on maternal health. If you go to Kagera or Mtwara, which are more rural areas, that becomes an issue both in terms of capacity and the fact that in countries that are very poor and disadvantaged, people don't want to live in those poor areas. So the smart people move to Dar es Salaam. Sadly a lot of the health professionals in Tanzania end up in London.
I think these are the kinds of challenges around our partnerships. I think one of the strengths of the volunteer approach is that we have the time to build partnerships. So for example when I worked for Save the Children, we would turn up and put money in and we would go away and come back, etc. I think by having skilled professional Canadians who can spend two years in a village in a rural setting, that gives us an opportunity to get to know the local players, to build those relationships, to understand the cultural context, the political context, and to build those partnerships.
I could bore you with examples of all the various processes we go through. That's really the challenge for me, finding partners you can work with who share that commitment.