2017 IMPACT REPORT PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE We are living in a new reality. It’s the power of she. For nearly 75 years, EngenderHealth has Looking ahead, EngenderHealth is more been on the front lines fighting for women’s committed than ever to championing Ulla Müller with Khadija sexual and reproductive health and rights at all levels rights-based approaches to and her daughter at an across more than 110 countries. We have sexual and reproductive health, advancing tackled tough issues before and have knowledge and solutions to reach more EngenderHealth-supported weathered daunting political challenges women and girls, and expanding strategic site in Tanzania. and constrained funding climates. Yet today partnerships that will unleash women’s is different: Attacks on women’s sexual and and girls’ potential and ensure sustainable reproductive rights are unprecedented in development. As you will read in the stories scope and are growing. that follow, we are well on our way toward achieving our goals and forging a new This reality only fuels our resolve to work reality for women and girls everywhere. smarter and harder—we will not rest until sexual and reproductive rights are Thank you for your invaluable partnership respected as human rights, so that women and generous support to make this vision and girls have the freedom to reach their a reality. full potential. Because when a woman can access contraception and the full spectrum of sexual and reproductive health services, including safe abortion, she can determine the course of her future. She will be healthier, is more likely to finish her Ulla E. Müller education, and will earn more throughout President & CEO her life. There is no doubt that when we focus on catalyzing the value of women and girls, they become a driving force that can transform communities and nations. WOMEN & GIRLS EngenderHealth is a pioneer in improving access to contraception and Building upon our successes to date, thisFIRST strategy reboots our mission in a sexual and reproductive health care, always guided by the belief that sexual new era of international development, embraced by the global community and reproductive health is a human right and is crucial for women and girls under the umbrella of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. to determine their futures. Grounded in the core values of quality, rights, and This new time calls for new approaches that prioritize women and girls as sustainability, EngenderHealth is poised to make an even greater impact crucial drivers to ending poverty, mitigating climate change, and achieving with our new organizational strategy, Women & Girls First. global progress and development. 4 5 Winnie Namatovu REACHING MORE WOMEN & GIRLS Uganda To Winnie Namatovu, 26, a nursing reach and underserved areas. Because assistant and peer educator from ensuring contraceptive choice and rights Kyantale Village in Uganda, topics such as is as important as providing reproductive generating income, managing money, and health information and services, using contraception are all connected. She EngenderHealth also supported the has a deep and personal understanding of Ugandan Ministry of Health in developing the linkage between delaying unwanted a national implementation plan on family pregnancy and the ability to earn a living. planning, focusing on long-acting reversible Her younger sister became a mother at contraceptives and permanent methods, age 13 and later had another unintended to ensure that women have options pregnancy. As a mother of two children throughout the national health care system. herself, Winnie also knows how important the spacing and timing of pregnancies are to one’s future. Becoming a peer educator on EngenderHealth’s Expand Family contraception was a natural fit for Winnie, Planning project, supported by The who learned counseling and community Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, mobilization skills from EngenderHealth. takes a holistic approach to ensuring She receives ongoing training, support, and advice from public health workers in her women’s and youth’s access to a range town and is proud to have counseled her of contraceptives, including long- sister, who is now using contraception and acting reversible contraceptives and is back in school. When talking to her peers permanent methods, with ongoing and to parents of youth, Winnie also uses or past activities in Uganda, the locally sensitive youth booklets developed Democratic Republic of the Congo, by EngenderHealth to aid discussions and Tanzania. EngenderHealth and our about sexual and reproductive health. ExpandFP project are part of Family In addition to providing ongoing training Planning 2020, a global partnership and engagement of peer educators, with the goal of reaching an additional EngenderHealth enables local health IMPACT HIGHLIGHT 120 million women and girls with facilities to offer mobile outreach services modern contraception by 2020. Winnie is one of 38,290 individuals trained last year on sexual and and hold special family planning service reproductive health by EngenderHealth. days to bring providers, counselors, and community outreach workers to hard-to- 7 Tigist Tefere WHEN THE POWER OF CHOICE IS IN HER HANDS Ethiopia Tigist Tefere, a family planning counselor, compassionate and quality care, including will never forget the pregnant teenager who contraception and comprehensive abortion came to see her at the Kolfe Health Center care services. in Addis Ababa. She counseled the teen on conception, her body, and her choices. The EngenderHealth is proud to have led the teenager said that she was not ready to be a way in dramatically expanding Ethiopian mother and that her father might harm her if women’s access to contraception and safe he found out she was pregnant. abortion by engaging providers with our competency-based training packages and Tigist feels good to this day for her role in individualized post-training mentorship supporting this teen through a challenging approach; advocating for a positive policy time and decision and in offering counseling environment that supports sustained, that enabled her to see that she had options integrated services; and fostering a and that all hope was not lost. She might quality improvement approach to services. have tried to end her own life if she had not EngenderHealth also ensures the availability had access to safe abortion, or she might of contraceptive supplies and instruments have died from an unsafe abortion if she had and supports facility readiness. no other options. Tigist’s passion for women’s health does not stop at work. She also advised her EngenderHealth has made it possible older sister, who was married at age 14 and for an increasing number of women and already had two children, on the importance girls to access an integrated package of planning her family and not leaving it up of health care services in a single to chance. visit to a health facility in Ethiopia. To In partnership with the Ministry of Health, date, 460 health facilities supported EngenderHealth’s Access to Better by EngenderHealth offer quality Reproductive Health Initiative (ABRI) is reproductive health services, including working to reduce maternal death and safe abortion and contraception. IMPACT HIGHLIGHT disability in Ethiopia by training health care providers like Tigist, who serve on the When women use contraception, it reduces the need for abortion, front lines of rights and choice, to provide especially unsafe abortion. Last year, our family planning activities around the world prevented an estimated 1.4 million unsafe abortions. 9 Fatema Begum FORGING STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPS Bangladesh Inside a garment factory in Dhaka, peer educators to ensure quality of care, Bangladesh, Fatema Begum spends most informed choice, voluntarism, respect for of her day at a sewing machine—one of client rights, safe services, and referrals to hundreds lined in rows humming under other services, as needed. There is regular the fluorescent lights. In addition to supervision and feedback to ensure quality sewing, Fatema works as a peer educator of care and support to Fatema and other to 1,400 co-workers about a topic that is providers. personally very important in her own life: contraception. Married at age 10, Fatema At first, some of Fatema’s co-workers had her first child at 13 and her second by were hesitant to discuss contraception 19. Now 29, Fatema shares her story with with her. “Women aren’t accustomed her co-workers and advises them about to talking about these things openly,” their right to plan their families by design Fatema explained, “but they want to avoid and not by chance. pregnancy because having children can hamper their earnings.” She says that her Garment workers work long hours, which co-workers now see family planning as a can make accessing reproductive health basic health care need that can help keep services a challenge. EngenderHealth doors open to other opportunities. is bridging this gap by supporting the provision of family planning information Fatema is proud of her role as a peer and services within the factory through educator and family planning champion. its public-private partnership with the She is a testament to how we must government and a Bangladesh garment devise creative ways and partnerships to trade association. bring reproductive health information, counseling, and services to women—when At the mini–health clinic established on and where they need them—so they in the factory premises, EngenderHealth turn can make an even greater impact on trains and equips health care providers and their communities. IMPACT HIGHLIGHT Last year, EngenderHealth reached 17.9 million people with sexual and reproductive health information, which is crucial for women and girls to plan their futures by design, not chance. 10 WHEREOUR GLOBAL WE WORK IMPACT Driving Change Through Advocacy In addition to strengthening health care outcomes for women and girls, which will services, within countries EngenderHealth contribute to building stronger communities advises district- and regional-level and aid governments in reaching their government partners to collect overall national development goals.