30 April 2018 Immediate use

Population Matters launches crowdfunding initiative for grassroots empowerment projects

Campaigning charity Population Matters has launched a new crowdfunding initiative in support of family planning and empowerment projects across the world. Initially focussing on projects in Guatemala, the UK and Kenya, Empower to Plan  allows supporters to make donations directly to three grassroots organisations, with Population Matters absorbing all the project’s administration costs.

Population Matters director Robin Maynard says:

“At Population Matters we campaign for action on unsustainable population levels. One very effective way of doing that is to show policymakers just how easy it is for high quality, voluntary, small scale empowerment projects to deliver the changes that make a difference to people’s lives and a difference to population growth. Meeting people’s unmet need for family planning and empowerment not only gives them the chance to improve their own situations, but naturally brings down birth rates – helping tackle the wider issue of unsustainable population growth.

“Whether it is teenage pregnancy in a developed country like ours, or lack of access to quality contraception in the Global South, these are solvable problems. We’re proud to be raising awareness of the fantastic work done by these organisations and to be making it easy for people to donate to them directly.”

The three organisations supported by Empower to Plan at launch are:

CHASE Africa, which works across East Africa to deliver family planning and healthcare to marginalised communities, via a network of local NGO partners. The charity takes a rights-based approach that always prioritises the needs of the people it serves. CHASE’s £3,000 target will help cover the cost of three mobile day-clinics in Kenya, enabling up to 600 people to access modern contraception.

WINGS Guatemala, which provides quality reproductive health education and services to underserved, primarily rural, Guatemalan youth, women and men. WINGS aims to raise £2,400 through Empower to Plan – enough money to pay for the contraceptives distributed by five of their local Volunteer Health Promoters over the course of a year.

You Before Two,  a UK-based sex education project with a mission to help adolescent girls at high risk of teenage pregnancy to make informed, positive decisions about their fertility and their futures. Following very succesful work on a smaller scale, the project aims to use money from its £3,000 Empower to Plan target to scale up, taking its life-changing programme to more adolescent girls regionally.

Donations to the projects can be made through their individual pages in the Empower to Plan section of Population Matters’ website. Once the projects’ initial targets have been met Population Matters will put forward the next set of high-impact grassroots projects meeting our criteria for support via Empower to Plan. (For further information on the selection process, see notes below. We are open to suggestions for worthy projects from across the world, whether they’re based in the US or Uzbekistan!)

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Contact

Robin Maynard, Population Matters director Email: robin.maynard@populationmatters.org T: 0203 900 2247

Notes for editors

To be supported through Empower to Plan projects must:

•    Have a mission and values aligned with Population Matters’  •    Meet an unmet need for family planning (they may also be working on ideational change, girls’ education and/or wildlife protection) •    Take practical, frontline action •    Have clear social and/or environmental objectives •    Evidence their impact.

All potential Empower to Plan partners have to submit an application, which includes detailed information on their mission and values and how they work, as well as the CVs/biographies of their key members of staff and evidence of their impact. Population Matters carries out an annual review of each of our partners’ financial accounts and, where possible, a yearly site visit. See further information here.

WINGS Guatemala website http://www.wingsguate.org/ Chase Africa website https://www.chaseafrica.org.uk/

In addition to the personal benefits arising to individuals helped by these projects, they have significant environmental benefits. Project Drawdown, an international evaluation of the most effective policy solutions to climate change, identified family planning and girls’ education among the top ten out of 80 assessed – having a combined impact greater than onshore and offshore wind power combined.

Population Matters is a membership charity that addresses population size and environmental sustainability. We believe population growth contributes to environmental degradation, resource depletion, poverty and inequality. We promote smaller families and sustainable consumption across the world, to achieve a healthy planet and a decent standard of living for all.

Population Matters www.populationmatters.org 135-137 Station Road, London E4 6AG Tel: 0208 123 9116 Charity No: 1114109