Member Associations

When it was founded in 1999, the Family Planning Association of Malawi (FPAM) focused on providing family planning services. As the organization has evolved, it has both refined and expanded its operation. Today, FPAM targets young people primarily, and reaches out to under-served rural communities. As a result, it operates 64 service points, including 53 mobile sexual and reproductive health (SRH) facilities and 4 static clinics. Its community-based distributor/services (CBDs/CBSs) profile is also very strong with 65 additional delivery points. As ever with IPPF Member Associations, the mix of outlets and approaches is very much led by the particular demographic and geographic needs of the country. FPAM also provides youth-friendly SRH information, education and behaviour change communication materials to young people at 4 youth centres, and through schools. Peer educators use group discussions, theatre performances, publications and audio-visual materials produced by community reproductive health promoters to pass on the message about good SRH practice and access to resources. The distribution of contraceptives, pregnancy testing, the diagnosis and treatment of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and voluntary counselling and testing (VCT) for HIV are core to FPAM’s clinic activity. For its successful operation, the organization depends on a team of 46 full-time staff and over 600 volunteers. Over the years, FPAM has forged partnerships with health, family and youth departments in government, to advocate forward-thinking national SRH policies. It works with a variety of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) including the Malawi Girl Guides Association and Banja La Mtsogolo. Financing support comes from UNFPA, IPPF’s Japan Trust Fund, the Japanese Organization for International Cooperation in Family Planning (JOICFP), UNICEF, National AIDS Commission, GTZ, and Youth Incentives. FPAM also networks with other SRH-focused groups, particularly in the fields of HIV and AIDS and youth issues.

Created in 1965, APROFA is a non-profit public interest organization with more than 50 years of experience in the defense of sexual and reproductive rights of all people. They provide sexual health care with a gender perspective and a rights-based approach that facilitates access and information on safe and effective contraceptive methods, allowing people to make decisions in tune with their lifestyles and thus avoid unplanned pregnancies, sexually transmitted infections, prevent situations of gender-based violence and all those possibilities that come with the lack of information. They have developed a line of education, generating awareness and training activities for the educational community in general, families and health professionals, with the purpose that more people are trained in Comprehensive Sexuality Education and thus children and young people receive the tools and skills to live a life free of violence, without gender stereotypes, have negotiation strategies and inhabit the consent. They aspire to a world where all people are free to decide; free to seek a healthy and responsible sexual life; and a world where gender, gender identity and sexuality are free.