Member Associations

Action Canada for Sexual Health & Rights is a progressive, pro-choice charitable organization committed to advancing and upholding sexual and reproductive health and rights in Canada and globally. They are an organization that works in Canada and around the world to promote health, wellbeing, and rights related to sexuality and reproduction. Building on the 50-year legacy of the organizations that formed Action Canada, we provide direct support, referrals, and information to the people who need it most, partner with groups and organizations on a range of campaigns using a collaborative, movement-building approach, and work with decision-makers to advance progressive policies on access to abortion, stigma-free healthcare, gender equality, LGBTQ rights, and inclusive sex-ed. Following decades of activism, three of Canada’s leading sexual and reproductive health and rights organizations saw an opportunity for a strengthened voice in policy, health promotion, and access to information and a way to engage others across Canada and around the world in the sexual and reproductive health and rights movement. The 2014 amalgamation allowed each of the three organizations to build on one another’s histories, strengths and shared vision. Canadians for Choice (formerly CARAL) and the Canadian Federation for Sexual Health (formerly Planned Parenthood Federation of Canada) would benefit from the policy expertise of Action Canada for Population and Development (ACPD) and the organization’s international partnerships, while ACPD would profit from frontline knowledge and experience in Canada. A newly bridged gap between the national and global context was made and our shared history has set the stage for an organization that works in collaboration across all levels.

Founded in 1976, the Dominica Planned Parenthood Association (DPPA) focused on providing information and education to support the government’s clinical service delivery programme in its early years. It began delivering contraceptive services in response to the significant contraceptive needs of Dominicans (particularly among adolescents), and the staffing constraints of the government programme. As a result, people could be sure of at least one inexpensive, private outlet where their family planning needs could be fully met. DPPA’s clinic is located the centre of the capital city and provides a range of services including family planning, pregnancy tests, family counselling and PAP smear screening. There’s an established community outreach programme which provides family planning through volunteers and shop owners, and an extensive programme of information and education activities. These include distributing pamphlets and posters, broadcasting short talks about family planning on radio and television and conducting community discussions. The negative effects of Dominca’s high adolescent pregnancy rate are aggravated by local practices that force pregnant girls to drop out of school permanently. To reach young people, DPPA provides sexuality and life skills education in secondary schools and to adolescents outside the school system through rap sessions, lectures, discussions and films. DPPA has also established an Under 20 Club, a teen group that trains its members as peer educators. BFLA is an associate of an umbrella organization known as the Caribbean Family Planning Affiliation Ltd (CFPA). The Caribbean Family Planning Affiliation (CFPA) is the only regional non-governmental organization (NGO) devoted to family planning and sexual and reproductive health in the Caribbean. CFPA serves 13 island Member Associations and 5 Associate Member Associations in the Caribbean, Central and South America. It supports these Associations with technical assistance and materials, and represents their collective interests at IPPF meetings and in the Caribbean region among governments and NGOs. CFPA Member Associations are located in Anguilla, Antigua, Aruba, Bahamas, Bermuda, Curacao, Dominica, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Nevis and St. Kitts, St. Lucia and St. Vincent. CFPA Associate Member Associations are located in Belize, Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago. The CFPA does not offer any clinical services or distribute family planning methods to clients, but rather focuses its work on governance and institution-building among its Member Associations. The CFPA oversees, manages and analyses core grants to 7 Caribbean Member Associations. The CFPA also submits project proposals for donor funding on behalf of the Associations.