Empowered family planners pass on the feeling
Curlin, P.
Family Planning World 2(6): 5; 18
1992
PMID: 12344625 Document Number: 322635
The Center for Development and Population Activities (CEDPA) promotes a women-to-women approach to implement integrated programs to improve the status of women. These programs all include family planning services and information and at least maternal and child health care, literacy training, microenterprise, and/or environmental improvement. This approach incorporates women field workers visiting other women living under isolated, secluded, and powerless conditions. The field workers are similar to the women they serve: married with children and having same cultural, social, and economic background. They distribute contraceptives in a culturally sensitive manner. The women accept family planning because the field workers genuinely care about the welfare of their sisters. CEDPA trains the field workers at participatory, interactive workshops, which causes improved self-esteem and team building. Workshop alumni refer to the experience as liberating. Skills learned in the workshops allow them to communicate effectively with other women, community leaders, health care providers, and policy advocates. For example, the women have learned effective means to deal with family opposition to contraceptive use and to bring about social change. Field workers in the slums of Ahmedabad, India, have overcome the initial resistance from men and mothers-in-law as evidenced by the rise in contraceptive prevalence from 12 to 61% in 3 years. In fact, 92% of new acceptors still used contraceptives after 3 years. A CEDPA training graduate in Katibougou, Mali, experienced initial disappointment in her attempts to promote family planning. When she realized that women did not use contraceptives because their husbands disapproved, she involved men in the project and contraceptive prevalence increased. In conclusion, sympathetic counseling, gender awareness, and technical knowledge allows women to receive the quality care to improve their lives and the lives of their families.