Advance Family Planning (AFP) has received an $18 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to sustain and expand its advocacy initiative. The grant will strengthen AFP's advocacy efforts to make quality, voluntary family planning easier to access for women and girls around the world.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is the lead coordinating partner for AFP, which comprises more than 20 organizations in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia.
The new funds will supplement advocacy efforts within nine countries (Burkina Faso, Democratic Republic of the Congo, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, Tanzania, and Uganda) and will support expansion into one additional country, Bangladesh. It brings total funding for the initiative to $46 million and extends it through 2018.
An estimated 225 million women—mostly from the world's poorest countries—want to avoid pregnancy but are not using an effective contraceptive method. In 2012, the global community committed to expanding family planning access to an additional 120 million women and girls by 2020, launching the Family Planning 2020 (FP2020) partnership.
AFP works to achieve this goal by engaging government, civil society, and other partners to increase financial investment in and political commitment to better access to and use of family planning information, services, and supplies.
"Thanks to the hard work of our partners, AFP's advocacy has increased the national and subnational commitment to family planning across Africa and Asia," said Duff Gillespie, AFP's Principal Investigator. "This generous supplement will enable us to accelerate our efforts in achieving the FP2020 goal."
The Advance Family Planning initiative is supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the David & Lucile Packard Foundation, and The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.
Based in the Population, Family and Reproductive Health Department of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the Bill & Melinda Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health conducts and facilitates cutting-edge research and translates science into evidence-informed policies, programs, and practice. The Institute works as an innovator, partner, advocate, and convener to bridge the gap between knowledge and implementation and promote access to universal reproductive health and family planning for all.