The United Nations warns that a sharp decline in international funding for reproductive health is threatening global efforts to reduce poverty, improve health and empower women worldwide.

“This is especially evident in the case of funding for family planning where absolute dollar amounts are lower than they were in 1995,” says Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, in a report released here.

If this trend is not reversed, he cautions, it will have “serious implications for the ability of countries to address the unmet need for such services, and could undermine efforts to prevent unintended pregnancies and reduce maternal and infant mortality.”

For full article, visit:
http://www.asiantribune.com/?q=node/10522

Participatory Assessment of Gugar Goge, an Entertainment-Education: A Qualitative Assessment Report
by Arvind Singhal, Sarah Hurlburt, and Radha Vij

This report documents the results of a participatory assessment exercise conducted in Nigeria to gauge audience reception of Gugar Goge (“Tell It To Me Straight”), an entertainment-education radio soap opera that sought to promote education for girls, the delay of marriage and pregnancies, and the adoption of family planning and maternal health services. The assessment exercise, which used participatory sketching and participatory photography, aimed to assess how frequent listeners engaged with the radio programme, and how they derived personal meanings from its plot, characters, and educational messages.

For full article, visit:
http://www.comminit.com/en/node/269041/304

This resource pack provides relevant knowledge to facilitate mainstreaming gender-responsive approaches into reproductive health programmes, and the inclusion of specific aspects of gender inequality and disadvantage into national policy frameworks.

It focuses primarily on health, particularly reproductive health; on HIV/AIDS; and on violence against women as it relates to health services. The publication was produced under a UNFPA/UNIFEM strategic partnership aimed at developing a coordinated approach for effective technical assistance to gender-responsive budgeting (GRB).

For full article, visit:

http://www.unfpa.org/publications/detail.cfm?ID=328&filterListType

Two of PMC programs were featured in the January/February 2008 edition of Mother Jones magazine, Gugar Goge and Ashreat Al Amal.

Read the article, “As the World Learns.”

PMC Vice President for International Programs Kriss Barker has a feature article in the Global Health Council’s latest AIDSLink (Issue 104, 1 July, 2007).

AIDSLINK, Issue 104 | July 1 2007
Written by Kriss Barker, Vice President, International Programs Population Media Center

Anguach and Demlew are the main characters in an Ethiopian serial drama. They are a loving young couple with a bright future. But Demlew’s mother, who doesn’t like Anguach, begins to meddle and pushes a neighbor to seduce her son. He succumbs, sleeps with the neighbor, and is infected with HIV. Anguach is devastated, but forgives him, and cares for him until he dies. Although terrified that she might be HIV positive, Anguach gets tested and finds out that she is negative. Anguach eventually marries again (this time, a man without a meddling mother!) and lives happily ever after. Touching story – but did it have any impact?

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Addis Ababa, Ethiopia – On August 1, 2007, thirty religious leaders from the Afar region, and representatives from the Islamic Affairs Bureau and the Women’s Affairs Bureau created and signed a declaration to end the practice of female circumcision (also called female genital mutilation or FGM). The declaration was one of the end results of a workshop Population Media Center (PMC) held on July 31st and August 1st to discuss the issue of female circumcision and what religious leaders can do to help eradicate the practice.
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Shelburne, Vermont, USA – June, 2005 – Population Media Center won one of three prizes in an online contest held by Changemakers calling for the best programs in combating trafficking in persons. The contest was held by the Ashoka Foundation through its website initiative Changemakers.net. The Ashoka Foundation exists to shape a citizen sector that is entrepreneurial, productive and globally integrated and to develop the profession of social entrepreneurship around the world. Changemakers is an initiative of Ashoka to build the world’s first global online “open source” community that competes to surface the best social solutions and aims to collaborate, to refine, enrich, and implement those solutions.

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On June 13th 2006 William Ryerson, President of the Population Media Center (PMC) received the Nafis Sadik Prize for Courage at the Annual General Meeting of the Rotarian Action Group on Population and Development in Copenhagen, Denmark. The award recognized Ryerson’s 35 year dedication to the field of reproductive health. The prize is named after the previous Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), Dr. Nafis Sadik, a national of Pakistan. In addition the Rotarian Action Group on Population and Development named Ryerson a Paul Harris Fellow.

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Ode Magazine
Issue 32

By Kim Ridley

Steamy tales of sex, betrayal and suspense can carry important social messages
Young and poor, Fikirte is in many ways Ethiopia’s Everywoman. Her life takes a turn for the worse when she meets Damtew, who is so obsessed with revenge against Fikirte’s innocent grandfather that he kills him and then begins to prey on her. He swindles Fikirte and seduces her half-sister, giving her HIV. He spreads vicious rumors to turn Fikirte’s family against her and to crush her dreams of finishing school. Still not satisfied, Damtew tries to murder Fikirte—twice.
Does Fikirte’s life sound like a soap opera? It is. The saga of Fikirte, Damtew, and the other captivating characters of Yeken Kignit (“Looking Over One’s Daily Life”) kept millions of Ethiopians glued to their radios for two and a half years. It also persuaded some of them to change their lives.
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By Pamela Polston, Seven Days

Western women of a certain age often talk about their “biological clock” – the physical imperative to bear children before it’s too late. But for Mother Earth, that clock is ticking for quite the opposite reason: She has too many children already, and if this terrible human fecundity is not slowed, it may indeed be too late – to feed the ones who are starving, or to sustain the ones who consume too much.

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