Community health worker training session
Family planning and community health service delivery
Family planning client with contraceptive pills
Condom outreach in village bar
The purpose of this building block is to provide all of Blue Ventures’ partner community members with access to voluntary family planning and other basic health services. In collaboration with Population Services International we have trained and are currently supporting networks of local women to offer family planning information and short-term contraceptives (condoms, hormonal pills and injections) in their villages. We also partner with Marie Stopes Madagascar to offer long-acting reversible contraceptives (hormonal implants and intra-uterine devices) on a regular basis. Our community-based distributors of contraceptives are also trained and supported to provide antenatal and postnatal education, mosquito nets, water purifying solution, oral rehydration salts and antenatal medication.
We established this community health and family planning initiative in direct response to unmet needs articulated by local women and girls. Our strong and trusting relationships with coastal communities, built through several years of working alongside them on fisheries management and marine conservation efforts, enabled us to expand our programmes to include reproductive health with their full support. We were able to leverage our existing operational infrastructure and human resources to pilot this initiative at a very low cost.
Our experience demonstrates how collaborating with health agencies, and drawing on existing operational infrastructure and strong community relations can establish a low cost and locally responsive health programme.
- Integrated community outreach combining health and environment topics: we have experimented with a variety of approaches and found small group discussions to be particularly effective. In the early days we focused more on mass mobilisation events which were good for raising awareness but less appropriate for stimulating deeper discussion and behaviour change / community ownership.
- Building effective cross-sector partnerships: we have learned that open lines of communication are important for building trust. This included us (as a conservation organisation) affirming our commitment to upholding reproductive rights which is often a major concern of health partners. Cross-training allows conservation partners/staff to understand and support the health work and vice versa.