Saving Kenya's Environment Through Family Planning

As they bid the community goodbye after 7 days of sensitizing them with family planning information, Rose, CHAT’s FPCORP, could not hide her joy due to the significant effect they were making especially in the lives of the young school-going girls. Just as she was about to enter the car and start their journey back, she noted a middle-aged woman who was shouting her name from a distance. 

Despite that the team, with the locum nurse, was somehow in a hurry to return, Rose couldn’t afford to ignore the woman who had made such effort to attract her attention and now running towards her. Catching up and calling Rose aside, she said “I can’t believe that you are going back, we need you to stay for a longer time and sensitize our daughters.” Out of her wisdom, Rose was keen to respond to this woman, so she said “It could not be better than this, my sister; we have done the most important thing - to educate you. I believe so far and with that information, our daughters are in a position to make an informed decision.”

The woman nodded back in agreement to the response Rose had given and stated that the information was given at just the right time and in the right manner. She went further to admit that since the reporting of the first case of COVID-19 when the schools were consequently closed, the parents had experienced so many struggles in keeping up with their teenage daughters who had just started “knowing themselves”. She mentioned to Rose that her greatest fear was the risk of her two daughters getting unwanted pregnancies, as she herself still struggles to single-handedly educate them.

As usual, Rose remained keen on the kind of responses she was giving the lady, realizing the community so much relied on the information that they receive from her. She then shared with her that it was the parent’s responsibility to share with their children on sexuality as they grow, as this was one of the factors that had contributed to a majority of teenage pregnancies. She then wrapped up the conversation by saying, “Despite about access to family planning, we have also shared with your daughters on the need for safe sex and abstinence, as this will also save them from a myriad of repercussions including contacting STIs’ & HIV/AIDs.

It was the team’s joy that they had also capacity build the facility nurse on how to offer the family planning services to the clients. According to Rose, it was such an impact made within a short time- and this continues to make her passionate about what she does. 

Thanks to GG support - in the past three months CHAT was able to reach a total of 4,982 individuals with behavior change communication (bcc) information with 1,523 family planning clients receiving different contraception methods, of which 1,222 chose the long-term methods giving 3 and 5-years protection against unwanted pregnancies & 22,315 condoms were distributed.

“Childbearing, I mean, if there's no place to go to deliver your baby, then you're the one that's delivering in those unhealthy circumstances. Or if you can't get access to family planning, your chances of surviving and being able to bring your kids up if they come one right after the other, that is what locks you into a cycle of poverty”

 Melinda Gates

*not their real names

“It’s quite a long distance from my place, but I always find it quite satisfying to serve my communities and especially fellow women,” were CHAT’s CORP partner Madina’s  words as was sharing about - her experiences while championing family planning (FP)  intervention within the communities. She wwent on to narrate about an encounter with one of the clients she had referred three years before in Merti.

She had visited the facility - as she usually did in every quarter - and this day, she was giving health education to the women that were attending “clinic day”. She had passionately taken the women through the & positive effects  FP had to their health and family and using the PHE approach, to hammer home the socio-ecological correlation of the FP intervention. Just before she had concluded her session with her prospect FP clients, she was interrupted by a lady who had just been dropped by a boda-boda at the facilityand ran towards them shouting her name.

This drew the attention of the women who were keenly listening to Madina. Madina was surprised to hear the lady shout her name. At first, she did not recognize her till she realized it was Hamsa*, whom she had visited three years before finding her at her lowest moment. Hamsa had five children and with no job, they all depended on her husbands’ minimum wage as a sales assistant in the local shop. They barely had enough for themselves and largely depended on the school feeding program to feed her children which only provided one small meal a day.

Without even introducing herself to the group of women, Hamsa went ahead and started appreciating Madina and piling praises on her for having changed her life. She was bold to criticize women in the community who were living in absolute poverty due to unmanageable family sizes. “Please my fellow women understand that as long as we don’t get responsible for our own health and the number of children we have, we will remain slaves to poverty and our male counterparts,” said the lady in a bitter tone.

She narrated how Madina visited her house three years back and shared about the environment, health and population and how these are all corelated. She explained how it has empowered her even to pursue business opportunities. She explained that ever since, she has been keen on the return date for removal and re-insertion and it was her return day. Madina was really happy to see that she had made an impact in someone’s life! More so in a way that she is so passionate about and believes in. As she concluded giving the health talk, Madina had all the joy to tell her audience “you are more familiar with this lady and how the family planning has empowered her. It is my joy that each of us lives to tell a story, a story of how different her life has been transformed through FP.”

In the past three months, through your support CHAT was able to reach a total of 3,982 individuals with behavior change communication (bcc) information and with 1,101 clients receiving different FP methods of which 934 chose the long-term contraception method providing 3 and 5 years protection against unwanted pregnancies.  21,615 condoms were also distributed.                                                                                                                      

"We cannot confront the massive challenges of poverty, hunger, disease and environmental destruction unless we address issues of population and reproductive health"

Thoraya Obaid