This document explains efforts made the Building Actors and Leaders for Advancing Community Excellence in Development (BALANCED) five-year Population, Health, and Environment (PHE) technical leadership project in mapping out the existing PHE network and developing the comprehensive ‘PHE Toolkit.’ The PHE network consists of the global network of practice including practitioners, leaders and researchers that address the need for the PHE approach. The ‘PHE Toolkit’ is the online repository of selected documents authored by individuals in this network.

In February 2010, the USAID-funded BALANCED Project sponsored a South-to-South learning opportunity for government and non-governmental officials to see up close how local stakeholders in the Philippines implement integrated Population, Health and Environment (PHE) approaches there.  Hosted by hosted by PATH Foundation Philippines, Inc. (a BALANCED Project partner), ten developing country representatives from six African and Asian countries spent two weeks visiting three PHE learning sites and a marine protected area in Bohol province, in the central Philippines.

This paper presents results of a study on lessons from PHE (population-health-environment) alliances to implement population-environment projects. The study is part of World Wildlife Fund’s Successful Communities from Ridge to Reef project, which aims to provide reproductive health and family planning services in key areas where population growth has serious impacts on natural resources, and find more sustainable solutions for local livelihoods.

The sustainability of development programs is a major concern for many nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) involved in program design and implementation. This case study tells how the Philippines country office of Save the Children U.S., a development NGO, established a successful partnership with the local government units of the municipality of Concepcion to ensure that integrated population-health-environment (PHE) programming would be mainstreamed and sustained within local government activities after Save the Children's involvement ended in the municipality.

Enlisting organizational support for a new concept or innovative idea can be a daunting challenge. This case study relates the story of how the FCB Foundation, Inc. (FCBFI), a non-governmental organization (NGO) microfinance institution associated with the First Consolidated Bank in the Philippines, evolved from being skeptical to cautiously optimistic about innovative approaches to social development and pro-poor lending- including integrating population, health, and environment (PHE) concerns into its programs.

Development practitioners must often develop strategies to work within constraints posed by traditional and cultural beliefs that may affect the progress of community projects. This case study is a fictional story that synthesizes many of the challenges and obstacles that two real development NGOs—the Tawi-Tawi Marine Research and Development Foundation and the Tarbilang Foundation—faced in mobilizing women to address population, health, and environment issues.

When planning development projects, one thing frequently over looked is the importance of building a good relationship with the Local Government Executives of the area. Leadership is a factor that can render a project a brilliant success or a failure. In this case study PATH Foundation Philippines Inc. (PFPI) was able to win the support of a mayor who had previously objected to condom distribution in the municipality. This support was hugely important to the innovative project that incorporated family planning and reproductive health in coastal resource management.

World Neighbors had involved community members in identifying the most critical challenges facing the development community. These challenges at the community level can be difficult to determine because they are frequently entail complex cause and effect relationships across different sectors. World Neighbors found a participatory method that served as the best plan of action in areas of livelihoods, natural resource management, and reproductive health. These participatory methods lead to community involvement and ownership in the project.