Family Care International (FCI) began operations in Burkina Faso in 1995, and opened field offices in Ouagadougou and Ouargaye in 1998 and 2001 respectively. Current operations focus on increasing access to skilled care during childbirth.

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Making Motherhood Safer

Burkina Faso is one of three focus countries for FCI’s Skilled Care Initiative. Through this work, FCI and local partners are working to improve access to skilled care before, during and after childbirth. Through a multi-faceted package of interventions — training providers, addressing equipment gaps, upgrading the health infrastructure, and community mobilization — FCI is working to ensure that high-quality maternity care is available near rural communities, where the majority of women live.

Improving Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health

In Burkina Faso, young people have little access to programs and information that can help them protect themselves from sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including HIV/AIDS, and unwanted pregnancy. With input from local partners and youth groups FCI produced educational materials for French-speaking Africa — a video, handbook, and flipchart — that provide straightforward information for young people about their bodies, their options, and their futures, and help them develop the self-confidence and skills they need to make healthy choices. These materials have been widely distributed in Burkina Faso, and are being used by a broad range of partners in over 10 countries in the region. FCI has trained youth counselors and program managers in Burkina Faso on how to use these materials effectively.

Practical health information is essential for young people, but they also need reproductive health services. Traditionally, such services have not been welcoming to young, unmarried clients. In Burkina Faso, FCI has worked with the government to increase young people’s access to sexual and reproductive health services. By creating “youth-friendly” services, trainee nurses and other health workers — Burkina’s future health care providers — got hands-on experience serving young people.

A Better Future for Rural Girls

Rural girls are the most disadvantaged group in many West African countries – they are much more likely to lack education, access to health services and the means for economic self-sufficiency than rural boys or their urban sisters, and they have very little decision-making power in their daily lives. Despite the enormous challenges that rural girls face, few of the rural health and development programs or projects in French-speaking Africa are aimed specifically at rural girls.

To bridge this gap, Family Care International and UNFPA conducted participatory research with girls, boys, their families and local leaders in three rural communities to produce the bilingual CD-ROM resource A Better Future for Rural Girls: Manager’s Briefing Kit. The content from this limited-edition publication has been enabled online – including research results, workshop reports, and a field guide for participatory research with young people.

For more information contact:

06 Boite Postale 9455
Ouagadougou 06
Burkina Faso
Tel: (226) 50 36 93 58
Fax: (226) 50 36 94 12
e-mail: burkina@fcimail.org 

Family Care International:
Francophone Africa Program
588 Broadway, Suite 503
New York, NY 10012
Tel : (212) 941-5300
Fax: (212) 941-5563
e-mail: francoafrica@fcimail.org