I had the privilege of leading A360 for four years, before stepping down and handing over to Fifi when it felt like the next phase needed local leadership. It was a transition that was characteristic of the project – adapt as the needs of the project and context changed.
Projects don’t usually last 10 years. So what was different about A360? For me, it speaks to donors willing to genuinely invest in learning and believe in a team; an organisation willing to give that team room to operate; and a culture that made curiosity, challenge and adaptation part of its DNA.
What began as an adolescent sexual and reproductive health program evolved into something much broader, encompassing livelihoods, maternal health and more. That is what can happen when you create a platform that’s adept at generating insight, ideating, adapting and scaling, and you look at adolescents holistically. It didn’t grow around a fixed intervention; it grew around a capability to listen, learn, and adapt.
In more than two decades of development work, I’ve never had another role with such a strong mandate to learn, generate learning, and apply learning.
Design and learning can sometimes become a little self-indulgent. But A360 was never about learning for learning’s sake. The expectations were extraordinarily high: turn insight into something tangible, test it, cost it, strip it back to a minimum viable product, demonstrate results, and find pathways to scale. And the scrutiny was intense.
A360 shaped me and changed how I think about programs, and I still miss the project and the team.
