Family Planning Carmen de Atrato Family Planning in Colombia

Record Breaking Campaign Empowers 93 with Family Planning Procedures in Single Day

Women for Conservation is celebrating a new record, with 93 family planning procedures delivered in two Colombian communities within a single day. In the first two months of 2022 we have already delivered more procedures for family planning in Colombia than any year before!

The twin campaigns took place with the help of our partner Profamilia in Zona Bananera and Carmen de Atrato. This single day marks life-changing opportunities for 93 families who will now be empowered with the option to plan when to get pregnant.

Both project sites represent biodiversity hotspots which are increasingly at risk due to population pressures and unsustainable consumption of natural resources. Carmen de Atrato, in the Choco region, is home to nearly 900 different bird species, 110 of which are endemic and can only be found in Colombia. Zona Bananera is on the periphery of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, which is considered the world’s most irreplaceable nature reserve due to its mosaic of biomes and endemic richness.

Twenty year-old Linda Gabriel Sierra is the mother of a 2-year-old daughter and one of the women who decided to receive a contraceptive implant in Zona Bananera. She spoke with us about her reflections regarding how this option to plan pregnancies will affect her personal life, and the lives of other girls and women in the community.

Linda family planning testimony zona bananera Family Planning in Colombia

The procedures included contraceptive implants for women and vasectomies for men, marking our first successful campaign which includes contraceptive medical procedures for men as well as women. This groundbreaking day was made possible through the ripple effect our family planning campaigns produce, as more people become interested in pursuing contraceptive procedures after seeing their friends and family experience positive results from our earlier campaigns in their communities.

By giving families access to this basic human right, we help them prevent unwanted pregnancies, which positively impacts community wellbeing while reducing strain on the natural environment. Thank you to our dedicated donors and partners who support us in this important work of empowering women and conserving Colombia’s biodiversity.

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Thank you to our local partners: