Situation Analysis:

• The reproductive health status of a vast majority of population in India is low.
• Nearly 130000 women die every year, about 15 per hour and a fifth of the world’s annual death, due to pregnancy related causes.
• Maternal mortality rate is as high as 540  64 infants for every 1000 live birth die every year due to preventable diseases
• While a number of states in India Union are moving fast towards population stabilization, seven major states which house more than 40% of country’s population are far lagging behind.
• Comprising Bihar, Chattishgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Uttranchal, these states, during the last decade, have experienced a population growth rate ranging from 2.2% to 2.5% as against the national average of 1.93 per annum.
• 66% women do not get ante-natal care. Hardly 25% mothers have skilled attendants at birth
• Only one-third of married women (aged15-49) use contraception.
• Hardly 39% of children (aged 12-23 months) are fully immunized.
• Spacing methods, hardly account for 7% of contraceptive prevalence rate (CPR) as against 36% of sterilization inspite of the fact that more young people are entering a reproductive age with a preference for small family size.
• The use for spacing methods is very low.
• Despite the importance of condoms for protection against sexually transmitted infections including HIV, reliance on male condom for family planning has remained very low (2% of CPR).

Strategic Direction: By removing socio-cultural barriers and promoting people’s participation increase access of high quality gender sensitive integrated sexual and reproductive health services to marginalized and poverty affected population in the areas served by the MA.

Goal: All people particularly the poor, marginalized, the socially-excluded and underserved are able to exercise their rights, to make free and informed choices about their sexual and reproductive health, and have access to SRH information, sexuality education and high quality services including family planning.

Objective : To empower 50% of marginalized and poverty stricken women to exercise their choice and rights in regard to their sexual and reproductive lives.

Activities:

• Conduct needs assessment using secondary and primary data in the context of women’s SRH, rights, socio-cultural barriers, establish benchmarks and share feedback with key stakeholders
• Carryout intensive campaigns twice a year, to sensitise men to SRH needs of women and their rights.
• Carry out capacity building programmes for volunteers, staff and other stakeholders on women’s rights and empowerment needs, value of girl child, gender construction of sexuality and power relations and removal of socio-cultural barriers
• Develop a team of 400 key trainers to promote knowledge and advocacy for women’s rights and choices.
• Run and manage 1000 community based centres for information, education, training and skills promotion backed by micro-credit schemes to empower marginalized women.
• Carry out rights based projects on women’s empowerment and their SRH choices in underserved and marginalized areas.
• Develop evaluation and monitoring tools and documentation package.

Objective:

• To improve access of 30% marginalized and poverty effected population to high quality SRH information and services using rights based approach].

Activities:

• Carryout SWOT analysis of the SDPs, run by the MA, utilizing self-assessment methodologies and share feedback with key stakeholders
• Utilise BCC approaches and carryout campaigns to sensitize key stakeholders to SRH including FP needs of marginalized population.
• Hold capacity building including advanced training programmes for providers in SDPs and other key professionals for increasing clients access to wide ranging quality services in SRH including FP
• Identify men’s SRH needs and carryout innovations for increasing men’s access to quality SRH services including FP
• Expand outreach services to meet the unmet needs of underserved and marginalized population regarding SRH information, education and services.
• Bring the Small Family By Choice Project into mainstream of the MA and utilize its potential for developing community based networks/projects in Empowerment Action Group States especially for school dropouts and women.
• From Technical and Monitoring Committees at Branch, Project and HQs levels to provide technical and managerial support to increase access to services.
• Develop evaluation and monitoring tools, documentation package and protocols for delivery of services.

Outcomes and Indicators: