“Mission Possible”: Innovative ways to approach women for providing reproductive services and information in Southeast Asia, West and Central Africa

Description

In line with the fifth goal “Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls” of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which are at the heart of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, we aim to explore how to effectively approach women who are still experiencing restrictions on accessing birth-control because of tangible and intangible obstacles including financial difficulties, religion and culture to provide contraceptive access and information. To answer this question, we examine a model organized by MSI Reproductive Choices (a worldwide NGO providing reproductive health and family planning services) under the name “MSI Ladies” which trains and sends their employees (the “ladies”, often community based midwives and nurses) to local communities to provide contraceptive services and advice to women. Our qualitative data were collected through published cases and reports as well as 14 semi-structured interviews with 12 informants (MSI’s general program manager N = 1, Southeast Asia program manager N = 1, country program managers N = 8, provincial program managers N = 1 and quality assurance program manager N = 1) and analyzed through Gioia et al. (2012)’s data structure. Our initial findings show several innovative ways to approach women, in particular through community representatives whose unofficial titles are “MSI grand-mothers” and “MSI sisters”, as well as through missions to build “bridges” between MSI ladies and local women/young girls. Our paper makes a singular contribution by explaining how innovative, community-based approaches could convince and help women to access necessary health services.

Period	17 Sept 2022
Event title	International Social Innovation Research Conference (ISIRC) 2022
Event type	Conference
Location	Halifax, CanadaShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International