Solutions Panorama

Improving Food
Security by Providing
Family Planning
Featuring:
Blue Ventures
Where:
Madagascar
Time Frame:
2007 – present
SUMMARY
Blue Ventures has been working in Madagascar to incorporate sexual and reproductive health
services with sustainable coastal livelihood and resource management initiatives. In addition to
supporting locally-led marine conservation initiatives, Blue Ventures provides voluntary family
planning services through a network of local women trained as community-based distributors of
contraceptives. Their Population-Health Environment approach encompasses a number of initiatives,
including community health promotion, locally managed marine areas, and voluntary family
planning services. This integrated approach addresses the interconnected challenges of poor health,
unmet family planning needs, environmental degradation, and food insecurity.
The program
serves over
25,000
people across
more than 60
communities.
IMPACT
These approaches enable couples to better provide for their families by decreasing birth
rates, improving food security, and empowering women to play an impactful role in resource
management. Coastal communities are able to live more healthily and sustainably within their
marine environment, building social and ecological resilience to climate change. Since Blue
Ventures began in 2007, it is estimated that over 1,125 unintended pregnancies have been
averted within a population of 20,000 in the southwest Velondriake and coastal Belo sur Mer
areas. In Velondriake, the proportion of women using contraception increased from 10 percent
in 2007 to 55 percent in 2013. Blue Ventures has expanded the program to serve over 25,000
people across more than 60 communities along Madagascar’s west coast.
LEARN MORE
About Blue Ventures;
blueventures.org
Source: Invest in Women to Tackle Climate Change and Conserve the Environment policy brief
WOMEN DELIVER 2016 CONFERENCE: SOLUTIONS PANORAMA 102