Unilever is one of the world’s leading suppliers of beauty and well-being, personal care, home care, nutrition and ice-cream products. Unilever strives to be the global leader in sustainable business and has a long tradition of being a progressive, responsible company.

Unilever India

To support the efforts of the Government of India, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance and Hindustan Unilever’s leading germ-protection brand, Lifebuoy, came together in 2016 to spearhead an initiative aimed at encouraging handwashing with soap (HWWS) and immunisation. The programme, called Safal Shuruaat (meaning “Successful Beginnings”), targeted young parents with children aged 0–2 years old, using innovative approaches to encourage them to implement positive health care practices for their children, so they can give them the best possible start in life.

The Safal Shuruaat programme was the first programme funded by Unilever Lifebuoy and Gavi, through generous support from the Gavi Matching Fund, supported by the Government of Netherlands. The programme was implemented by GroupM India, resulting in a five-fold increase in incidental HWWS and a more than 30% increase in uptake of rotavirus and measles vaccines among children aged under 2 in specific districts of Uttar Pradesh.

Unilever and Power of Nutrition – Indonesia

Building on their prior success with the Safal Shuruaat programme in India, in 2023, Gavi, Unilever with its world-leading germ-protecting soap brand, Lifebuoy, and The Power of Nutrition, a global charitable foundation advancing the fight against malnutrition, came together in an innovative multi-sectoral partnership in Indonesia to help fight infectious diseases among children.

The Keluarga SIGAP programme – meaning “the ready family” – takes a holistic approach to disease prevention, focusing on HWWS, immunisation and child nutrition. These three behaviours, when combined, have proven to be some of the most effective ways of reducing mortality rates in children aged under five. From 2023 – 2025, the multi-channel behaviour change campaign implemented by GroupM and with endorsement of the Ministry of Health of Indonesia, will reach 1 million Indonesian children aged under five in areas where instances of malnutrition and vaccine-preventable diseases are highest.

Girl Effect, a dedicated not-for-profit creative social enterprise, is on a mission to forge a transformative “New Normal” in collaboration with and for girls. Emerging from its roots with the Nike Foundation, Girl Effect took flight as an independent entity in September 2015, pursuing its core goal of breaking the inter-generational cycle of poverty by empowering adolescent girls. This remarkable endeavour encompasses the creation of locally embedded media brands that redefine the significance of girls in our society. Their diverse portfolio includes regional brands, global platforms, magazines, riveting radio dramas, engaging talk shows and interactive two-way digital content, all designed to uplift and empower girls worldwide.

Girl Effect has been a Gavi partner since 2016. In that year, it initially committed US$ 5 million of its resources, which were matched by the Gavi Matching Fund. This support aims to boost the adoption of the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine among young girls in Ethiopia, United Republic of Tanzania and Rwanda. In 2022, Girl Effect and Gavi expanded the partnership in Ethiopia and UR Tanzania through a US$ 4 million commitment, matched again by the Gavi Matching Fund. In 2023, an additional phase was added to expand the scope of the project in UR Tanzania, as well as to support the Government of India to design, test and scale content in support of the introduction of its HPV vaccine campaign.

Children’s Investment Fund Foundation/UNICEF Ethiopia

The Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF) is an independent philanthropic organisation based in the United Kingdom, working with a range of partners seeking to transform the lives of children and adolescents. CIFF has been supporting child health interventions for prolonged periods in Ethiopia.

In 2023, Gavi, through its Matching Fund, doubled CIFF’s US$ 15 million investment in UNICEF Ethiopia’s “End Child Wasting” programme. This programme supports vitamin A supplementation, malnutrition screening and immunisation, to complement its investment in the Child Nutrition Fund for the procurement and distribution of ready-to-use therapeutic food to treat severe acute malnutrition in drought-prone areas of Ethiopia.

This is one of Gavi’s flagship partnerships in immunisation and nutrition integration (INI), as it will enable Gavi and partners to generate robust evidence on integrated programming (including cost-effectiveness); and operational best practices in integrating service delivery across various platforms among hard-to-reach and urban lower-income populations. This partnership’s findings will help build the case for further multi-sectoral investments to improve equitable access to health services.

Arm is a British semiconductor and software design company. Since 2021, it has been a private sector partner, pledging £1 million to Gavi, a commitment matched by the Gavi Matching Fund, followed by an additional £1 million commitment that was matched by the Gavi Matching Fund in 2023.

This investment brings together Gavi, Arm and the UK-based non-profit Simprints to develop a unique and contactless digital identification solution that is accurate, scalable and cost-effective. Guided by Gavi’s expertise in immunisation, the project deploys Simprints’ biometrics solution with support from Arm’s technology, global network and funding.

The Eleanor Crook Foundation (ECF) is a growing US philanthropy organisation focused on scaling the most cost-effective interventions to address malnutrition, with an overall goal of saving as many children’s lives as possible. To fight malnutrition, ECF invests across the spectrum of implementation research, policy analysis and advocacy.

ECF and Gavi came together in 2023 to initiate a US$ 2 million project focusing on generating evidence for incentivising vaccination with nutrient supplementation adequate for children aged 6–24 months in Nigeria. The project is designed to test the assumption that the blanket distribution of small-quantity, lipid-based nutrient supplements would increase vaccination coverage, as well as reduce incidence of wasting among the target population.

Integrate Health (IH) is a non-profit with nearly 20 years of experience building innovative health care solutions with local communities and ministries of health to make quality primary health care accessible to all. In Togo, IH has demonstrated the effectiveness of a community-based health system strengthening programme called the Integrated Primary Care Program (IPCP), with published results showing a 30% decrease in infant mortality rates in communities where this approach has been implemented.

Gavi’s partnership with IH was announced during the Mid-Term Review event in 2023. This collaboration empowered IH to introduce its evidence-based IPCP in Guinea. This project has been supported by a coalition of private sector partners, including Vitol Foundation (US$ 1.5 million), CRI Foundation (US$ 200,000), Jasmine Social Investments (US$ 1 million) and Partners for Equity Australia (US$ 300,000). Gavi also matched these contributions.

Shifo Foundation builds technology to transform performance measurement at service delivery points, streamline administrative tasks and channel all efforts toward continuous improvement. It does this through its Smart Paper Technology (SPT), which is meant to replace labour-intensive paper forms and manual systems with a simple and efficient paper-to-digital solution.

SPT leverages existing infrastructure for paper forms and scanning, making it an easily adaptable tool. Specifically, SPT serves as a data solution for low-income, low-resource settings to assist with better data capture of birth registration, infant immunisation data, and stock and stock records management.

Shifowas selected as a Pacesetter in 2026 for Gavi’s innovation platform, INFUSE, which scales up tried and tested innovations to improve vaccine coverage. In 2018, Shifo’s funding from Action Aid International The Gambia, Swedish Postcode Foundation, af Jochnick Foundation and IKARE Ltd was doubled by the Government of the Netherlands through Gavi’s Matching Fund to reach a total of €1.8 million, enabling the scale-up of SPT in Gambia.

Parsyl provides an easy way to collect and analyse data about supply chain conditions and transform it into insights about the integrity of sensitive products as they are shipped around the globe. Using a combination of proprietary wireless sensing devices and data analytics, Parsyl provides a solution that allows global health supply chain partners to answer critical questions about what happened to vaccines during shipment and storage, the causes and locations of any vaccine degradation, and what improvements can be made.

Parsyl was chosen as a Gavi INFUSE Pacesetter in 2017. An extension of the partnership was announced at Gavi’s 2018 Mid-Term Review, to expand the use of Parsyl’s advanced supply chain data platform to support Senegal and Uganda to track and monitor cold chain conditions while vaccines are being distributed within countries. This partnership was made possible by a combination of support from the Government of Canada, Unorthodox Philanthropy and the Gogel Family Foundation.