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Bold and Fearless Champions   
Sep. 29, 2011 — “The world today, more than ever, needs champions,” said Dr. Nafis Sadik, special advisor to the U.N. Secretary General at a panel discussion on reproductive health and family planning on September 28 at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. This panel serves as the launch for CEDPA’s speaking tour that will visit Chicago and Seattle the first week in October. “One can say that for the poorest women, in the poorest countries, much hasn’t changed from their mother’s time,” she explained. “You can see progress, but it is quite patchy.” Dr. Sadik called for the world to do better when it comes to women’s rights and reproductive health. She reminded the audience that when the U.S. took leadership in prioritizing reproductive health, that’s when there were leaps in progress. She, also, underscored the importance of amplifying the voices of women to ensure that their needs are met. Dr. Sadik was joined on the panel by two reproductive health champions from CEDPA’s current workshop Strengthening the Voices of Reproductive Health and Family Planning Champions. Tigist Kassa Milko of Ethiopia and Rosemary Ardayfio of Ghana shared stories of the challenges women in their countries face in accessing reproductive health services and what their organizations are doing to improve the lives of women.
Tigist, Rosemary, and their fellow participants from Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi and Tanzania, are in D.C. for two weeks for the advocacy workshop. The women champions are enhancing their knowledge of key national and global family planning and reproductive health issues, increasing their understanding of the U.S. policy environment, strengthening their capacity to deliver strategic messages to policymakers and developing country action plans. Champion Melkam Kassa (pictured left) from Ethiopia was clear about the significance of this workshop. “Most of maternal mortality in Ethiopia is caused by unsafe abortion and hemorrhage,” she explained. “We use family planning to prevent unsafe abortion and to space and delay pregnancies.” As a team leader and program officer for Engender Health, she maintains partnerships with the national government, and organizes training on family planning and advocacy. The skills she is learning during the workshop are essential to making progress in elevating the importance of family planning in her country. “I plan to organize advocacy for family planning in Ethiopia,” Melkam explains. “The RAPID Women training was particularly useful.” RAPID Women, developed to project the impact that high fertility and population growth can have on different economic sectors, is one of the many tools the participants learned about to enable them to better advocate for reproductive health and family planning services. “The fact that I got a tool with a human face behind it really resonated with what I wanted to do back home, targeting rural women and focusing on the human element… we’re going to use it back home,” said Aisha Mohamed, deputy head of the Reproductive Health Division within Kenya’s Ministry of Public Health. Aisha’s proactive attitude, matched by all of the participants in the workshop, is exactly what Dr. Sadik was referring to when she referred to the women champions as “bold and fearless.” “Together we can be an unstoppable force,” said Dr. Sadik. The Strengthening the Voices of Reproductive Health and Family Planning Champions workshop and subsequent speaking tour are generously sponsored by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. You can watch a Web cast of the panel discussion here. Learn more about CEDPA’s workshops and reproductive health programs. |
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