Step 1: Community Needs Assessment and Formative Work

Formative work, including a community needs assessment, is conducted to ensure there is a need and desire for FMP in the target community(ies). Guidance is provided on creating a community advisory board to solicit stakeholders’ assistance with activities such as identifying and recruiting parents, scheduling sessions, and securing venues for session delivery.

Step 2: Program Adaptation Workshops and Adaptation of Key Materials

A 2-day adaptation workshop in the target community is conducted by the implementing organization to ensure that FMP is adapted in a culturally appropriate way. The workshops create buy-in and ownership as community participants—including older youths—provide feedback, suggest modifications, and take part in the design of a country FMP logo. Modifications to the program materials are made by the FMP team.

Step 3: Staff Training

Potential FMP facilitators participate in both individual and group interviews. Successful candidates attend a 5-day Training of Facilitators (TOF). The TOF is a hands-on, skills-building course that provides participants with in-depth knowledge about how the program works and prepares them to facilitate FMP sessions. Only trainees who demonstrate thorough knowledge of the FMP curriculum and skills to facilitate FMP sessions are certified as FMP facilitators; only certified facilitators may be hired by the implementing organization. Additional staff trainings include a facilitator practice week, a reproductive health and family planning workshop for facilitators, a program managers training, and a monitoring and evaluation workshop.

Step 4: Pilot Testing FMP

Pilot tests are conducted to validate the adaptations made and to determine whether FMP is acceptable, feasible, and relevant for the community. Pilot testing of FMP involves 2 phases. In the first phase, each facilitator pair delivers the program in an accelerated format (participants receiving the 5 sessions in 5 consecutive days; children attend the 5th session). In the second phase of pilot-testing, the program is delivered as prescribed, with each pair of facilitators delivering the program to between 4 and 8 groups of 12–18 participants who attend an FMP session once a week for 5 consecutive weeks with children attending the 5th session.

Step 5: Full Operation

Following completion of the pilot tests, full operation and scale-up of the intervention begins. Facilitator pairs deliver the program to up to 8 groups of 12–18 participants per week for 5 consecutive weeks (the series of 5 sessions over the 5 consecutive week period is called a wave). Routine process monitoring and quality assurance checks, including fidelity checks, are conducted and summarized by implementing organizational staff and sent to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) headquarters after every wave. CDC headquarters provides ongoing technical assistance through email, conference calls and yearly technical assistance site visits to assist with trouble-shooting.