Overseas Programs

In 2008/9 Women's Plans Foundation gave grants for family planning to Marie Stopes International Australia, Save the Children Australia and ChildFund Australia.  AusAID matched funding is continuing funding with SH&FPA.  We advocate increasing information on the improvements brought to community health as a result of child spacing and numbers.  We can be a conduit of information about the differences family planning makes, with learnings about effective funding.

Focus

AusAID's focus for reproductive health has turned from Southeast Asia to the South Pacific, where men's views of ownership may include women, making continual childbearing a default setting for the woman's role. Violence in gender relationships, and virility measured by the number of children, create barriers to women's entry to health clinics in countries where rapid population increase is creating social and political unrest, perpetuating poverty. The very challenges show the importance of family planning, but the proportion of the reproductive health allocation expended on behavioural programs as a prelude to reaching women and making contraception possible, means that existing levels of funding may not extend to provision of sufficient rural and urban family planning for a sustainable society.  Since 2007 Women's Plans Foundation has been focussing increasingly on programs that directly bring family planning to women who otherwise would lack it.

Donations achieve

Starting in 2003, we raised funds for Family Planning Australia's International Program, contributing towards programs in southeast Asia and the South Pacific, producing an educational video and training programs in local languages, and workshops in reproductive health for young people and men.

In 2006/7, Sexual Health and Family Planning Australia's collaboration with Live & Learn Environment Development Education recently modified an education module so that it was suitable to the Solomon Island context and piloted in workshops throughout villages around Guadalcanal. The revised manual was piloted in 6 communities in Solomon Islands, four communities in PNG and also in Timor Leste. After a year of usage in three different countries, there was to be a manual that is user friendly and available across the Pacific for NGOs.

In 2006/7 Women's Plans Foundation enabled a partnership between Sexual Health & Family Planning Australia and the Australian Conservation Foundation in East Timor, to encourage understanding of the link between population and environment.

In 2006/7 Women's Plans Foundation made possible a three year supplement to programs of ChildFund Australia in Vietnam, to strengthen family planning services. The program began with a needs assessment and has increased in the number of methods of contraception available. It has moved into awareness-raising campaigns meeting the needs assessed, with community leaders as models, providing regular consultations and examinations.

In 2007/8, Women's Plans Foundation has encouraged further overseas aid agencies to value the role of contraception in alleviating poverty. Our donations are specifically for access to family planning as a component within larger, holistic programs, and lead to increased focus on a choice of contraceptives in poverty alleviation. 

If we cannot enable women
to manage family size,
our human family will continue
its intolerable stresses on our world.

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