Faith plays an important role in the lives of people across nations, cultures and communities. Faith leaders often influence health-seeking behavior and faith-based organizations (FBOs) provide a notable amount of healthcare information, services and supplies.
Faith and family planning interact in complex ways at personal, community, civil society and governmental levels. Acknowledging these intersections and relationships can help eliminate barriers restricting the advancement of family planning.
Many FBOs provide family planning information, services and supplies, giving people the knowledge and capability to choose when and how many children they would like to have. FBOs have been known to encourage conversations and generate educational materials that provide a religious and cultural context and awareness that makes family planning options more approachable.
FP2030 is collaborating with the faith community to identify and share best practices to help drive progress post-2020. FP2030 supports the engagement of FBOs to help women achieve their fertility intentions and to improve healthy timing and spacing of pregnancy, including the voluntary use of modern contraceptive methods.
In order to collaborate with FBOs effectively and efficiently FP2030 is promoting four major areas of strategic emphasis:
- Increase country-level focus on integration of religious leaders into the FP2020 work.
- Make sure that FBOs are sitting meaningfully at the table on all committees and working groups, in political and policy discussions, in developing training modules.
- Facilitate a “safe space” FP2020 platform for FBOs and secular family planning actors for continuous dialogue and discussion.
- Establish or advocate for funding that encourages faith and secular actors to apply jointly for project support.
Please refer to our Faith and Family Planning Brief (here) for more information on our plans and research.
