ATLANTA (July 7, 2017) — In advance of next week’s 2017 Family Planning Summit in London, the poverty-fighting organization CARE has released a new report, The Path to 2020: Delivering Transformative, Rights-based Family Planning. The report highlights CARE’s progress in expanding access to family planning for women and girls in some of the most difficult and dangerous places in the world.
In 2012, CARE committed to being part of the global movement to reach an additional 120 million women and girls with family planning information and services by 2020, realizing that many with the greatest unmet need for family planning reside in hard-to-reach areas affected by crisis, conflict, or natural disasters.
As highlighted in the Path to 2020, CARE has invested significant resources to ensure provision of quality sexual and reproductive health services – including family planning – in some of the most unstable regions of Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali, and Pakistan, resulting in a dramatic increase in new contraceptive users there.
CARE is also one of the few global organizations working with married adolescent girls, who are among the most vulnerable in any community yet are typically unable to access age-appropriate sexual and reproductive health services. In Ethiopia, CARE facilitated peer solidarity groups and community engagement opportunities with married adolescents, who reported becoming more knowledgeable about sexually-transmitted infections and better able to communicate with their husbands about contraceptive use after participating in the program. Path to 2020 demonstrates that supporting communities to overcome gender and social barriers can help young women become empowered, which will ultimately help to increase use of family planning.
Christine Galavotti, CARE’s senior director of sexual and reproductive health and rights for noted the impact improved family planning access has on gender equality worldwide. “As we reflect on the progress we’ve made, and the challenges ahead, we should remind ourselves that this is about protecting women’s reproductive rights. It’s about helping women assume the control they are entitled to, and ensuring that women and girls everywhere have access to the information, services and supplies they need to decide if they want children, when they want children, and how many children they want to have.”
CARE is pleased to be working toward the ambitious goals set at the 2012 Family Planning Summit in partnership with government leaders, donors, and other civil society organizations, and welcomes the opportunity to celebrate accomplishments, share lessons learned, and commit to the work that remains to be done at the 2017 Family Planning Summit this week.
Media Contact: Nicole Harris, 404-735-0871, nharris@care.org
About CARE
Founded in 1945, CARE is a leading humanitarian organization fighting global poverty. CARE places special focus on working alongside poor girls and women because, equipped with the proper resources, they have the power to lift whole families and entire communities out of poverty. Last year, CARE worked in 94 countries and reached 80 million people. Learn more at care.org