Family Planning is all about families getting ahead
The Turimiquire Foundation in Venezuela, our Empower to Plan partner, is working hard to reach some of Latin America’s most marginalised communities. As Venezuela’s humanitarian crisis rages on, the organisation shares why family planning is so important for improving people’s lives and protecting the environment.
Family Planning and Reproductive Health mean so many things to so many people: controlling their destinies as families, improving quality-of-life and education for children, helping women and families lift themselves out of poverty, enhancing the progress of entire communities.
So what does it mean to the planet?
- A human right around the world (United Nations,1968)
- A formidable engine for reducing carbon footprint and mitigating climate change.
- An environmental safeguard as growing populations around the world put pressure on fixed land bases.
- One fast path to helping women participate in economic marketplaces and fuel sustainable growth across industries, regions, and countries.
- An accelerator opening educational opportunities for both children and their parents.
- A live-saving healthcare tool for improving maternal/infant health and reducing both maternal and infant mortality.
- A life-affirming opportunity for children – with fewer involuntary children onboard, each wanted child can receive the additional material and emotional support that she/he deserves.
- A tool for reducing the risk of pandemics by lowering rural population density and alleviating the need to encroach on wilderness and wildlife habitat.
- A way to help mitigate violent conflict and competition that can result from mass migrations as people search for scarce resources and a better life.
In each sexual and reproductive health workshop, I see young people overcoming taboos and imposed sociocultural norms. For those young people who have already started having sexual relations, our workshops provide them with the tools to do so in a healthy, voluntary and responsible way, making use of contraceptive methods. This allows them to continue with their life plans, pursue their dreams and improve their quality of life as well as their relationship with the natural world.”
Noris Cova, Turimiquire Sex Educator
This is what we know: If you make family planning services available, people will come. They will come from afar and they will keep coming – with life-affirming appreciation for a service that they need to improve their lives. Here in Venezuela, the demand for family planning services is strong, sustained, and chronically unmet.
And all this comes from simply giving people the services they want on a local level, which is what we at Turimiquire do. We have improved the lives of more than 100,000 women and families and with your help, we continue to expand our services in the face of unmet need. Our infrastructure is largely in place, it is just a question of funding.
Thank you to all of our supporters who have made the Turimiquire Foundation the one successful provider of family planning and reproductive health services in north-eastern Venezuela.
And a special thank you to Population Matters for generously supporting our family planning services in this time of adversity.
