Women for Conservation is celebrating our first family planning brigade success in the Amazon Rainforest! From March 15th – 17th, 2022, Women for Conservation partnered with Profamilia to provide seventy-two women with family planning medical procedures in the municipality of Mapiripán, in the Amazon Rainforest.
Women for Conservation and Profamilia have been collaborating with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations’ Leadership and Gender program for many months to bring this brigade into fruition. We have hosted educational talks, placed billboards, and worked with community groups, including la Jefe de Consulta (JAC), to bring this previously inaccessible reproductive healthcare to this remote Amazonian village.
Women for Conservation is thrilled to empower these women with the right to safely and effectively plan their pregnancies. Women for Conservation’s family planning programs seek to help communities understand the link between a growing population and the pressure on local natural resources, as well as the importance of their actions in relation to conservation. By providing families with family planning opportunities in the rural areas of the ProAvesnature
Reserves, they are given the tools to finish schooling, attend our conservation workshops, and follow their dreams. Access to family planning services is an international human right, and we believe that all women should be able to plan their pregnancies in a way that will benefit the health, nutrition, education, and wellbeing of themselves and their families.
In addition to benefiting these women and their families, providing family planning resources to this area also benefits ProAves’ El Jaguar Nature Reserve, which borders the Mapiripán municipality. Giving women the opportunity to decide how many children they want and avoid unwanted pregnancies reduces the population’s reliance on natural resources and helps break the cycles of poverty which can leads to illegal logging, poaching, and deforestation.
Our partner organization, ProAves, established El Jaguar Nature Reserve on February 5th, 2013 to protect 1,992 hectares of riparian forest, savannas, swampy areas, lagoons, swamps, lakes, high forest, and lowland forest in the Amazon region. This reserve is especially important for protecting the Tapir (VU), Giant River Otter (EN), and the Jaguar (NT). Additionally, the reserve is home to 295 species of birds among which are the Rose-breasted Chat, the Velvet-fronted Grackle, the Dot-backed Antbird, the Crestless Curassow, the Black Curassow, the Horned Screamer, and the Blue-throated Piping Guan. El Jaguar Nature Reserve helps to consolidate a buffer zone for the protection of biodiversity against rapid and unsustainable development.
Written by Zoe Vozick