You are here » Home » Telling Our Story
Success Story
Bringing New Future to 22-Year Old Minya Mother
Family Planning Enlists Imams in Egypt
One day while riding on a local bus in Minya, Aleya
heard a voice over a loudspeaker that changed her
life.
A 22-year old Egyptian woman, Aleya had already
borne three children and had two miscarriages.
The tape-recorded message asked her to think
before having another child – and invited her to
attend a community meeting with an imam from
the local mosque and the village health clinic’s
female doctor - to learn how family planning could
help her.
Aleya had dropped out of school at 12, married at
14, and now was exhausted from caring for her
family, working in Egyptian fields, and recovering
from her numerous pregnancies. But she was
afraid of family planning. Rumors in her village, in
the Minya governorate, said it harmed women or
that it was against Islam.
Woman at family planning clinic in Eqypt.
The percentage of Egyptian
women using contraceptives
rose from 24 percent in 1980 to
56 percent in 2000. The total
fertility rate fell from 5.3 to 3.5
births per woman during those
same years.
Because the meeting was at the local mosque with
the imam and the local female doctor would be
there, Aleya decided to attend with her sister.
There they found other women from the village and
it gave them all some comfort in a situation that
was new and uncharted for the extremely closeknit
and traditional society in which they live.
USAID has helped women with family planning
all over the world including Egypt where the
population continued to rise over the last 20
years -- from 40 million to 67 million. Many rural
areas like Upper Egypt have not adopted family
planning. That's one reason Minya was chosen
for a demonstration project.
Encouraged if not emboldened by the presence
of friends and relatives, the women of Minya
began asking about family planning and were
told it was perfectly safe and not against Islam.
Aleya left the meeting with a pamphlet telling
her where the nearest family planning clinic was
located and the following day she went there to
ask about the best contraceptive method for her.
The pilot program is turning the statistics around
in Minya where only 23 percent of women had
previously used contraceptives, one of the lowest
rates in Egypt. Today it is 48 percent. USAID has
invested $180 million since 1978 to make family
planning services, information, counseling, and
materials accessible in Egypt.
The results indicate that by giving training and a
role to local religious and community leaders,
family planning programs have penetrated the
veil of suspicion that often blocks new ideas in
less developed areas.
Print-friendly version of this page (244kb - PDF)
Back to Top ^
|
RSS Feed for Recent Telling Our Story Updates
