EngenderHealth has engaged in the following activities in support of its commitment to FP2020.
West Africa: EngenderHealth has been working intensively in West Africa, where the need for family planning outweighs access to and use of contraceptives. In collaboration with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)/West Africa, and our local partners , EngenderHealth is managing a five-year project known as Agir pour la Planification Familiale (AgirPF) to improve access to high-quality, voluntary family planning services in Togo, Niger, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, and Mauritania, where unmet need is the greatest. EngenderHealth has developed partnerships with local and international partners to leverage technical, human, and financial resources for family planning in the region and to ensure sustainability. A cornerstone of this is the partnership developed with the West Africa Health Organization.
- In addition to training health care providers in gender-sensitive and youth-friendly services, EngenderHealth is leveraging mobile technology to reach underserved communities and is reducing financial barriers through partnerships with ministries of health and local organizations to improve access to health services.
- To date, EngenderHealth has initiated intensive training at family planning Centers of Excellence in Togo, Niger, and Burkina Faso, to ensure quality in family planning services in the region through provision of training and supervision.
- In Nigeria, together with the Ministry of Health, EngenderHealth is training health care providers and has developed tools to respond to the health needs of women and girls in a conflict environment, after 200 abducted girls were returned from Chibok to Borno State.
- In Guinea, the Ebola crisis hit the country very badly; just like other international development partners working on family planning and health-related matters, EngenderHealth’s operations there were negatively affected. Despite this hurdle, EngenderHealth’s operations resumed normally in February 2015. We learned from the Ebola crisis that health systems in Africa remain extremely fragile and highly vulnerable to health emergencies. The Ebola crisis affected the entire health systems, thus taking national human, technical, and financial resources away from family planning and other health matters. In this regard, we urge continuing financial investment and priority attention to family planning and to strengthening health facilities and human resource capacity, which will supply entire health systems with sustainable human resources to face future crises.
- Accordingly, EngenderHealth continues to advocate for and to support the implementation of the 2001 Heads of State and Government Abuja Declaration on HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases for the financial commitment by Africa countries to 10% of their national budget for health, as a means to ensure sustainable commitment to and implementation of the FP2020 agenda and sustainable family planning services beyond 2020.
Rights-based family planning: EngenderHealth is a trusted global leader in advocating for family planning programs that are designed, implemented, and monitored in a way that protects and fulfills human rights and puts women’s needs, desires, and preferences at the center. Last year, EngenderHealth developed two publications designed to assist diverse audiences, including donors, policymakers, program planners and managers, service providers, rights advocates, and community members, in their efforts to achieve rights-based family planning programs.
The first publication is the Voluntary Rights-based Family Planning Conceptual Framework User’s Guide, a practical resource to help stakeholders design, implement, and monitor family planning programs that respect, protect, and fulfill human rights. Coauthored with the Futures Group, with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the guide is a companion to the recent publication of Voluntary Family Planning Programs that Respect, Protect, and Fulfill Human Rights: A Conceptual Framework, which took long-standing family planning concepts, such as quality of care, voluntarism, and service access, and linked them with human rights principles, such as empowerment, equity, nondiscrimination, and accountability. The Framework provides a holistic vision of what a rights-based family planning program looks like; the User’s Guide provides a pathway to applying the framework in actual practice. The guide will:
- Help facilitators orient stakeholders on the voluntary, rights-based family planning conceptual framework;
- Support assessments and action planning related to strengthening human rights in family planning programs; and
- Guide stakeholders to monitor, evaluate, and hold programs accountable.
EngenderHealth also developed Checkpoints for Choice: An Orientation and Resource Package, which takes a closer look at the concept of voluntarism—one component of a rights-based approach—and helps stakeholders understand the clients’ experience and their ability to make full, free, and informed choices about family planning. It consists of a detailed plan with support materials for a one-day workshop to enable family planning program planners and managers to strengthen the focus of family planning programs on clients’ ability to make full, free, and informed contraceptive choices in the context of a rights-based program. In addition to the workshop guidance and materials, the package includes links to recommended references, tools, and additional reading.
EngenderHealth also manages a blog focused on the topic of rights and choice, called Champions for Choice (www.champs4choice.org), which features regular posts by technical experts, policymakers, and program leaders.
Advocacy: EngenderHealth launched a new campaign, Where’s The Family Planning?! (WTFP?!) in late 2014 to raise awareness of the important need for family planning around the globe.
- The campaign seeks to inspire American women in their 30s to take action in support of the 225 million women who want, but do not have, access to contraception and safe childbirth. We partnered with Academy Award–winning actress and humanitarian Mira Sorvino to generate greater visibility, and the response to our campaign to date has been extremely positive.
- Our first video, “History’s Worst Contraceptives,” was viewed nearly 400,000 times on YouTube, and we received mentions in TIME, Glamour, Cosmopolitan, Upworthy, BuzzFeed, RH Reality Check, Jezebel, and The Huffington Post, among other top outlets. To date, we have made strong progress, including campaign impressions reaching nearly 800 million, campaign views (website and video) approaching nearly 500,000, 66,000 new social media followers and fans, and continuing online engagement and action.
