Family Planning

can bring more benefits to more people for less money than any other single technology

The Small Project supports the work of the mobile clinics operated by Communities Health Africa Trust

There are literally tens of thousand of women in Kenya with little or no access to family planning. CHAT’s primary focus is the provision of reproductive health care and family planning to women living in some of the more remote rural areas of northern and central Kenya.

CHAT does offer a number of other interventions including HIV/AIDS testing and counseling, basic curative care, childhood immunizations, education about health and ecology, and awareness about the dangers of female genital mutilation.

CHAT tries to improve the quality and sustainability of health care by helping to develop community-based health care workers.

How does CHAT operate?

There are several ways that CHAT delivers it services. The main way is with specially equipped Land Rovers that travel from place to place.

The CHAT team usually comprises three persons: a driver, a nurse, and an assistant for record keeping. The team usually is in the field for about a week at a time. They will arrive in a community and set up a clinic in known location (at a school, in the local market, under tree). Clients arrive throughout the day. Local people, working for CHAT, will have mobilzed people in their community to attend the clinic. Typically, the team will pitch tents and camp for the night before moving on early the next morning.

In more remote locations, where roads are non-existent or impassable, CHAT will operate, as funding is available, mobile camel clinics. An in urban areas, CHAT has been pioneering the "back pack strategy" for the delivery of care.

The Importance of Family Planning

Ensuring that women in the developing world have accessible and affordable family planning allows them to gain control of their own reproductive health thus affording them the opportunity to space their babies and limit the number of births they have.

This is an incredibly simple but effective strategy to address three endemic problems:

Poverty, for the family, the community, and the nation

Personal suffering and early death

Environmental degradation

Other benefits of family planning include

The number of unskilled abortions and infanticides declines, as unwanted pregnancies occur less frequently.
Fewer girls drop out of school on account of unwanted pregnancies. For every year in secondary school, a woman’s wages increase by 25% on average.
Because family size is smaller, women are better able to care for their families’ emotional, physical, and economic needs thereby improving the health of their children. Children born three to five years apart are 2.5 times more likely to survive than children born two years apart.
As populations stabilize, the demand for natural resources declines and the land is better able to support both wildlife and livestock.
The livestock population can stabilize, further reducing pressure on pasture and water sources.
Degraded environments can begin to recover.
Human conflict over pastureland is reduced.
Human-wildlife conflict eases and wildlife populations are protected. This can lead to more tourism income.

The provision of family planning is one of the few true cost-saving health care interventions, with value accruing not just to the women but to their families, their communities, and the country.

To learn more about the work of CHAT please visit their website. http://www.chatafrica.org/

How you can help

All donations to The Small Project directed to help CHAT and its work will be transferred in their entirity to CHAT.

To make a donation to The Small Project you can send an e-transfer to thesmallproject@gmail.com or access PayPal through the button below. Or you can send a cheque, payable to The Small Project, 200 Lorne Avenue, Newmarket, ON L3Y 4K2.

All donations of $10.00 or more will receive a tax receipt. Please include your street address.