“I am a Product of Family Guidance Association of Ethiopia (FGAE)” –Ethiopia’s Health Minister
Monday 08 February 2016, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
“I am a Product of Family Guidance Association of Ethiopia (FGAE)” –Ethiopia’s Health Minister
Ethiopia’s Minister of Health Dr. Kesetebirhan Admasu has acknowledged the great work of IPPF’s Member Association in Ethiopia – the Family Guidance Association of Ethiopia (FGAE).
“Growing up as a young boy in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, I would over the summer holidays and weekends go over to FGAE’s youth center and spend time there. The youth center was a space that helped keep me constructively engaged together with other young people. FGAE has played a critical role in protecting me and my peers, guiding and molding me into the person that I am today. I am indeed a product of FGAE,” he said.
Dr. Admasu made these remarks during the launch of the Strategic Framework of the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF). IPPF is the leading non-governmental Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) service delivery organization in Africa, and the leading SRHR advocacy voice in the region. IPPF achieves its objectives through working with Member Associations in 42 African countries, with FGAE being its representative in Ethiopia.
IPPF’s new Strategic Framework is a bold and aspirational vision of what IPPF plans to achieve, and how it will achieve it over the next seven years. The Framework will guide national Member Associations and partners in formulating their own country-specific strategies, based on their resources and tailored to serve the most marginalized groups in local contexts.
During the launch of Ethiopia’s policy guideline on family planning, the government recognized FGAE’s in championing family planning over the decades, and their lead in various advocacy processes in the country over the years.
The Ethiopian government, through the Ministry of Health aims at ensuring that all people in the country have access to quality healthcare, including family planning. However, it faces one major challenge with this regard -that of the pastoralist community, according to Dr. Admasu.
“Reaching pastoralist communities in Ethiopia is not easy. To address this, we have now engaged different partners, one of them being FGAE to assist in ensuring that family planning and related services get to these hard-to-reach populations. We recently offered the organization a grant, which will enhance FGAE’s work in finding innovative ways to reach pastoralists. This is a population whose uptake of family planning is still very low, and we intend to change this. We believe we will achieve this with the collaborative efforts of organizations such as FGAE. We look forward to this partnership, even as we shift our focus to the new Sustainable Development Goals which are all about ensuring that no one is left behind.
As a government, we are committed to the development of our country and we will continue to engage in partnerships with different Civil Society Organizations that have a strong local network and work well with the community, such as FGAE.”
