Values-driven Advocacy

PAI believes that finding local solutions to the challenges women and girls face to their reproductive health and rights creates lasting change, and helps countries become less reliant on foreign aid.

Our work begins and ends with partnership. It is informed and guided by our partners and the most pressing policy and advocacy needs from their perspective. Our work is responsive to their demands for change and visibility as well as their desire for country ownership.

The Women Promotion Centre (WPC) is one of our partners that took their advocacy and leadership to the next level in 2018. And they did it on their own terms.

Led by young women, the nonprofit works in Kenya to improve young people’s access to sexual and reproductive health services.

Since it’s taboo to discuss these issues in public, most young people get information from their peers—and it’s often inaccurate. At the same time, these youth, especially young women and girls, often endure hostile attitudes from health care providers, as well as condemnation by religious and community leaders if they use contraceptives.

That all began to change in 2018 thanks to the work of WPC. With support from PAI over the past three years, the group has made critical breakthroughs in transforming attitudes and advancing young people’s right to access sexual and reproductive health care.

PAI worked with WPC to craft and refine their advocacy strategy and provided guidance as they turned their strategy into action. This included spearheading an advocacy campaign to implement a new national adolescent sexual and reproductive health policy.

WPC convened policymakers, religious leaders and reproductive health advocates to support the creation of youth health centers in Nairobi and throughout Kenya. The voices and experiences of young people were central to WPC’s effort.

The outcome? The shared dialogue among influencers boosted political support for the youth centers and positioned WPC as a strong youth- and women-led organization making needed change. And WPC’s advocacy led to a new taskforce that is now fast-tracking the implementation of Kenya’s national adolescent sexual and reproductive health policy.

PAI’s advocacy zeroes in on improving policies and increasing funding related to sexual and reproductive health. To make this strategy globally successful, we seek partners in the Global South that approach the work of our movement from different angles and include voices not always heard in conversations about sexual and reproductive health and rights.

One such partner is Observatorio de Mortalidad Materna (OMM) based in Chiapas, Mexico—one of the country’s poorest states and home to one of its largest indigenous populations, with 12 federally recognized ethnicities. OMM focuses on improving sexual and reproductive health care through evidence generation and public policy monitoring.

PAI’s work with OMM is in the highlands in Chiapas with the Tzotzil and Tzeltal Maya, where deep discrimination and inequality among indigenous adolescents and youth undermine their right to access sexual and reproductive health care and drive high teenage pregnancy rates.

Part of OMM’s work is equipping indigenous youth with the skills to monitor Chiapas’ health clinics. The goal? To make sure providers are giving quality, nondiscriminatory and culturally relevant care that is aligned with a national strategy to prevent teenage pregnancy.

To achieve this, PAI worked with OMM to craft an advocacy strategy that ensures national policies include the needs of indigenous adolescents and youth. It also holds health providers accountable for delivering those services in culturally appropriate ways.

This includes facilities offering sex education materials in indigenous languages and banning the denial of care to young women in traditional dress.

How? By training indigenous young people like 28-year-old Maruch Hernandez to become citizen monitors at their local clinics.

Last year, Maruch and her partner Juana visited public health clinics in 11 communities. While there, they documented whether young people were able to access the health care they desired, as well as the availability of contraceptive supplies and medicines to treat sexually transmitted infections. They also noted if clinics had long queues, forcing patients to wait for hours.

The evidence gathered by Maruch and other citizen monitors showed that teenage pregnancy in the highlands is directly related to persistent difficulties in accessing contraceptives.

This evidence is now being used to educate the newly elected government of Chiapas on how to improve the quality and accessibility of care at the 48 public health facilities serving over 40,000 indigenous youth and 20,000 indigenous women in the region.

For Maruch, who also teaches workshops about sexual and reproductive health and rights, serving as a health promoter is a chance to equip youth in her community with critical information to choose their own futures. This is especially true for girls, who are often forced to marry young and have no say in decisions about their reproductive health.

For PAI, accountability means fulfilling the promises we have made to women and girls—especially the most vulnerable. That requires ensuring earmarked funding is spent and policies are implemented by officials, clinicians and communities after they are passed and adopted.

In Uttar Pradesh, India, PAI partner SAHAYOG plays an important role in translating policies meant to empower women and girls to accountability at the community level. Through our partnership, SAHAYOG was able to expand Ek Saath—their initiative that engages men in rural communities to tackle harmful gender norms, reduce gender-based violence and foster shared responsibility for family planning among men and women.

In Uttar Pradesh’s Chandauli village, as in many communities, deeply entrenched patriarchal gender norms make it difficult for women and their husbands to talk about contraception and sexuality and the need for women and girls to have the same social and economic opportunities as men.

Female community volunteers deliver contraception and discuss such matters with women. However, many men remain uninformed about family planning. As key household decision-makers, their ignorance often creates barriers around the usage of birth control and other reproductive health needs.

But now, Ek Saath is providing a space for men to learn from their peers about condoms and vasectomies, as well as contraceptive methods for women. And the approach is helping dismantle long-standing norms and transform men’s behavior and attitudes.

Since being involved in the initiative, men have been inspired to become more involved with housework and taking care of their children. The rate of violence in Chandauli—and specifically, violence against women—has decreased. And more girls are staying in school.

These values have led PAI through triumphs, like when a young woman in Nairobi, Kenya can access the birth control she wants, and moments of heartbreak, like when the Global Gag Rule is expanded, causing more women and girls to lose access to critical sexual and reproductive health care. Our core convictions keep us evolving and propel us forward, smarter and more committed after every win and every loss.

Without these values, we cannot create a better future for women and girls.

As we anticipate another unpredictable year due to the current political climate, we will continue to lean into our values for direction, focus and energy to accomplish our shared vision.

We will seek innovative ways to elevate the devasting impact of the Global Gag Rule and build support on Capitol Hill for its permanent repeal.

We will provide the financial resources and strategic guidance that empower our more than 70 partners across the Global South to create change in their communities.

We will foster inclusive relationships with our partners as we work together to improve the health and autonomy of women and girls.

And with our partners and supporters, we will hold policymakers accountable for their commitments and actions.

Together—with our partners and with you—we will create a world where women and girls have the quality reproductive health care they deserve.