International Women's Day (8 March) is a time to celebrate the incredible achievements of fearless women around the world. Today (and every day) we’re honored to highlight the passion and continued commitment of doctors, nurses, peer educators, activists and volunteers who dedicate their efforts to advancing sexual and reproductive health and rights globally. These are just a few of them:  Chathurika Jayalath, youth volunteer, Sri Lanka In May 2017, flash flooding in Sri Lanka triggered landslides resulting in many people losing their homes and forcing them to seek emergency shelter. 24-year-old student Chathurika, a youth volunteer for IPPF’s Member Association the Family Planning Association of Sri Lanka (FPASL), took part in the response. She helped in organizing the health camps, and she even runs a youth club at her university to inform her peers about sexual health. Find out more about Chathurika inspiring community contributions   Emma Watson, actor & activist, UK For almost as long as she’s been in the spotlight, actor Emma Watson has been well known for her feminist activism. Over the years she has lent her support to many vital issues including ending child marriage, violence against women and female genital mutilation, as well as fighting for abortion care and LGBTQI rights. She’s also a partner to IPPF! Keep up with Emma’s important work by following her on Twitter now Vicky Acora, volunteer, Uganda  Vicky is a married mother-of-two. She faces all the usual challenges that women face when it comes to getting sexual and reproductive health services - but Vicky’s life is complicated further because she is deaf. In the past, she would have trouble communicating with health staff who did not understand her needs, but since seeking services at Reproductive Health Uganda’s clinic in Gulu (a Member Association of IPPF), she has been able to get the healthcare she needs. She has since then even been advising other deaf people to seek services with the clinic. Read more about Vicky’s experience   Dr Leana Wen, president of PPFA, USA IPPF was thrilled when Dr Leana Wen was appointed as President of Planned Parenthood Federation of America last year. She is a dynamic public health leader, a practising physician and not least, a formidable woman. Since she started her demanding role, she has helped Planned Parenthood continue to provide high-quality care to the people who need it across the United States, and she is a powerful voice in our fight to ensure that women have the ability to make their own healthcare decisions. We look forward to seeing what she will achieve next. If you do too, then follow Dr Wen on Twitter Abla Abassa, health worker, Togo Abla is a community health worker. She spends her days cycling around her home village’s dusty streets in rural Togo visiting households who have signed up to an innovative programme that provides contraception in hard-to-reach places. She might visit as many as five households in one day, where she’ll discuss and provide family options including the Pill, condoms and injection, with people who might otherwise not know what their choices are. Find out more about what her vital job entails  

On Zero Discrimination Day, IPPF stands for respect, dignity, compassion and care for all. We are committed to providing quality healthcare to every person that visits one of our Member Association’s clinics, regardless of their age, sex, gender identity, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, economic status or anything else.  When you provide healthcare with dignity and respect, you can inspire others to do the same. Meet some of people who were so motivated by the discrimination-free healthcare they received from our Member Associations, or by the potential to support their communities in need, that they decided to become much-valued volunteers. Lakshmi from Nepal, living with HIV – Community care mobiliser with the Family Planning Association of Nepal “I made a plan that I would come back home [to Palpa], disclose my status and then do social work with other people living with HIV, so that they too may have hope to live. I said to myself: I will live and I will let others living with HIV live.” Read more about Lakshmi Leilani, a trans woman from Tonga – Volunteer at the Tonga Leiti Association, supported by Tonga Health Family Association “I think Tonga Family Health has done a lot up to now. They always come and do our annual HIV testing and they supply us [with] some condoms.They really, really help us a lot. They [are the] only one that can understand us.” Read more about Leilani Eric from the USA – Outreach volunteer for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America  “The first thing I do when I have hardcore substance abusers sitting in front of me, I first show them identification, I let them know I understand just how they feel. I’ve been there feeling hopeless, helpless, confused about where to turn.” Read more about Eric Hasina from India – Sex worker and volunteer at the Family Planning Association of India “Selling my body doesn’t make me a bad person, but working as a peer educator has helped enabled me to help many like me.” Read more about Hasina Milan from Nepal, living with HIV – Community care mobiliser with the Family Planning Association of Nepal “There are 40 children in this area living with HIV,” he says. “I talk to them, collect information from them and help them get the support they need. And I tell them: ‘If I had given up at that time, I would not be like this now. So you also shouldn’t give up, and you have to live your life.” Read more about Milan Joseph from Botswana, a gay man living with HIV – Client at the Botswana Family Welfare Association “I never have any problems coming here. I feel comfortable here. At [the government clinic] there is no privacy; most of my friends are there. Sometimes if you go there you find them suspecting something, and everyone will be knowing your status. That’s why I prefer BOFWA [Botswana Family Welfare Association].” Read more about Joseph

I am absolutely delighted that Dr. Leana Wen has been appointed as President of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Dr. Wen is a dynamic public health leader, a practising physician and not least, a formidable woman. As the first doctor to lead Planned Parenthood in nearly 50 years, we send a clear sign that sexual and reproductive healthcare is an essential part of healthcare. This exciting appointment comes at a critical time for Planned Parenthood. Not only will Dr. Wen help Planned Parenthood continue to provide high-quality care to the people who need it across the United States, she will be a powerful voice in our fight to ensure women have the ability to make their own healthcare decisions.    Dr. Wen has dedicated her career to expanding access to healthcare for the most vulnerable communities, reducing health disparities, and finding innovative solutions to address public health problems. She currently serves as the Commissioner of Health for the City of Baltimore. Over the last 18 months, Dr. Wen has fought to protect women and families in Baltimore from the Trump administration’s rollbacks of basic healthcare protections. In March 2018, on behalf of Dr. Wen and the Baltimore City Health Department, the City of Baltimore sued the Trump administration for cutting funds for adolescent pregnancy prevention, which resulted in a federal judge ordering the restoration of $5 million in grant funding to two Baltimore-based adolescent pregnancy prevention programmes. She has also fought the Trump administration changes to Title X — the nation’s family planning programme — to protect funding for 23 health clinics in Baltimore providing reproductive health care for women with low-incomes. As a practising physician, Dr. Wen has helped organize thousands of doctors and health professionals against President Trump’s proposed domestic gag rule, saying it fundamentally alters the nature of the doctor-patient relationship and will dramatically reduce the quality of care for thousands of women. “For more than 100 years, no organization has done more for women’s health than Planned Parenthood, and I’m truly honored to be named its president,” said Dr. Leana Wen.  “As a patient, I depended on Planned Parenthood for medical care at various times in my own life, and as a public health leader, I have seen first-hand the lifesaving work it does for our most vulnerable communities. As a doctor, I will ensure we continue to provide high-quality health care, including the full range of reproductive care, and will fight with everything I have to protect the access of millions of patients who rely on Planned Parenthood.” - Dr Leana Wen On behalf of the IPPF family, I want to welcome Dr Wen to the Federation and I’m very much looking forward to working with her when she joins PPFA in November. -  Dr Alvaro Bermejo, Director-General, IPPF

It wasn’t the group meetings, the testing services or the health facilities that attracted Manny Norman, it was the offer of a free subway card and a bite to eat. A friend who was also a substance use told him about the workshops in a basement at a nearby community centre. Manny focused on the subway card which would be worth a few dollars if he sold it on. “I just wanted something to eat,” he says. “I hadn’t eaten in probably 20 hours. And the idea of getting more drugs without stealing sounded good to me.” Thirteen years later and he is still attending the Safety Counts meetings run by Planned Parenthood’s Project Street Beat, and credits them with helping him rebuild a life shattered by drug abuse. At the time, he explains he was neglecting his young family, stealing from them to buy crack cocaine and alcohol. His wife would call the police or lock him out of the home on an almost daily basis. “I was on crack and alcohol, the drugs that led me to dereliction, that led me to stealing, being unmanageable, not responsible, without a care in the world,” he says. “(I) didn’t want to work. I just wanted to feed my drug addiction.” Starting a new life But when he walked into the Safety Counts meetings, he says now, he realised he was among people who understood his life. “They met me where I was at,” he says. “They could tell I was under the influence. They could tell I was hurting, that I wasn’t doing the right thing and they made me feel no less than and no different. They gave me hope to come back the next week.” At first, he just went with the flow, focusing on the food and the subway card, not taking much notice of the services on offer. But eventually, he realised there were other people in the room he had come out the other side and rebuilt their lives. “We talked about harm reduction,” he says. “I could identify with the stories other people were telling. Lying, cheating, stealing, borrowing money knowing you wouldn’t pay it back.” Detox and rehab followed. He used the facilities of the projects mobile medical unit to get himself tested for Hepatitis C and HIV and has managed to stay clean, even training as an HIV outreach worker, and has rebuilt his family life. “It’s a happy home now,” he says. “My daughter got her father back, my wife got her husband back. Most of all I got myself back, thank God.” Without Project Street Beat he says his life would have continued its downward spiral. He would most likely be in prison today. Instead, he works as a supervisor for a cleaning company. And when he bumps into one of his friends from the old days he knows what to do. “When I walk down the street and see someone I know – someone I took drugs with or drank with – I let them know exactly where the mobile might be at,” he said. “I have cards in my pocket I give out to people and let them know this is the new way.” Watch Project Street Beat in action

A young man stops by a pile of rubbish at the side of the road. He fiddles with an abandoned umbrella, snapping off one of its broken ribs and slipping it into his backpack. Eric Fairchild spots the signs. The HIV prevention specialist greets the man like an old friend. “We got condoms, leaflets, testing right here,” he says standing in front of Planned Parenthood’s mobile medical unit. The man refuses initially, stepping into a nearby grocery store, before returning a few minutes later with his girlfriend to hear about the services on offer. The umbrella rib, says Mr Fairchild later, was a giveaway. It makes a perfect tool for scraping the residue from a substance pipe. Understanding and overcoming Eric has worked for Planned Parenthood for 12 years, using his experience growing up in the Brooklyn neighbourhood of Brownsville to help spot others who are in need of help. “I was part of the streets,” he says. “I was a substance abuser. Never injected, but I smoked, sniffed... stuff of that nature.” He has been clean for 26 years but explains that his experiences help him connect with other users. “The first thing I do when I have hardcore substance abusers sitting in front of me, I first show them identification,” he says.  “I let them know I understand just how they feel. I’ve been there feeling hopeless, helpless, confused about where to turn.” Some occasions might mean he has to use the training and education he has received as an outreach worker. Other times it is a case of using his 60 years’ experience of life in Brooklyn. “That’s my benefit to the programme,” he says. “I’m street savvy as well as educated in the classroom. I have the best of both worlds.” Eric already had an extensive background in community work before joining the project, prompted by a desire to learn more about HIV prevention following the death of a relative and a friend died from the illness. He is often the first point of contact for clients, handing out pamphlets on the street corner, conducting HIV tests and explaining Project Beat Street– and the facilities available on the mobile unit to wary newcomers. From there he can offer advice and guidance on other services, from home care managers to sources of funding for people with HIV and setting up appointments at clinics. He follows up with phone calls and meetings, often at every step of a client’s progress. “I saw when they came in,” he says. “I saw them come in from a struggling situation, uncomfortable with their lifestyle at the time. Going from being an unproductive member of society to taking better care of themselves and being in a healthier situation that they were before. I am always happy to know I was part of that process.” Watch Project Street Beat in action

It might not be quite what you expect from a medical clinic in New York. But the compact room at the back of a truck parked on a street corner in Brooklyn’s Brownsville neighbourhood, a neighbourhood with the highest concentration of public housing anywhere in the country, is fitted with everything needed for a mobile health unit. For 30 years, Project Street Beat’s mobile medical unit has been working on the streets of New York, travelling to some of its most deprived zip codes offering HIV testing, sexual health screening, emergency contraception and a slew of services that have evolved to keep up with changing needs. Five days a week the colourful mobile unit travels between the Bronx, Brooklyn and northern Manhattan as part of a mission to provide care to people living beyond the traditional medical system. Brownsville is a regular stop off on the mobile clinic's route. Left behind by the gentrification sweeping across the rest of Brooklyn, mainly due to investors fear of crime and lack of transportation links to the wealthier Manhattan, Brownsville has the highest murder rate in the city and the lowest life expectancy in the district. “This is my exam room,” says Sarah Zuercher, a women’s health nurse practitioner. Barriers to treatment can include drug addiction or a lifestyle that brings suspicion of authority, explains Zuercher – the mobile unit’s lead clinician – or simply living without health insurance. Without insurance, any doctor’s appointment, prescription or hospital visit can run to hundreds, if not thousands of dollars. Life without medical insurance In Brooklyn, about 10 percent of people are trying to get by without insurance. Some are gambling that they can save a couple of hundred dollars a month if they stay healthy enough to avoid visiting a doctor’s surgery or hospital. Others, such as undocumented immigrants, fear that any interaction with officials carries the risk of deportation. “Then there are people who are just busy. Small business owners, people who don’t have flexible work schedules,” says Zuercher. “There aren’t a ton of medical services in this area. To travel into the city to go to one of our health centers is just not an option for women in jobs that don’t have a lot of flexibility.” And there are people like Bernard Andrews, whose heavy use of crack cocaine, marijuana and alcohol meant that although he found his way to free clinics after being diagnosed with HIV, he never managed to stick to a drug regime and treated doctors’ appointments as an inconvenience. “To tell you the truth I wasn’t managing at all. I was a wreck. I was at that point, where I didn’t care,” he says. “All I wanted to do was use drugs and sell medication because I was going to die anyway.” Mobile outreach projects might be more often associated with the developing world than one of the richest cities on the planet, but even in New York, it is the only way some people access medical services. These are the people who fall between the cracks of a city without a universal health care system, where the onus is on individuals to buy insurance and navigate their way through a complex web of competing providers as an informed consumer. Even the safety nets of Medicare and Medicaid, which pick up a chunk of the costs for the elderly and the poorest, require battling through an intimidating amount of bureaucracy. The result is hundreds of thousands of people across the city who don’t have regular check-ups and who cannot get treatment for niggling worries before they turn into full-fledged problems unless they can pay thousands of dollars out of their own pockets. Meeting people where they need services In recent years, America’s opioid epidemic has also had an impact. Now the unit offers training in how to use Narcan – a fast-acting antidote to overdoses. But the key to it all is meeting patients where they need services. “It only works because we come to where people are,” says Zuercher, who has worked on the unit for the past three and half years. “That’s the real difference. We are in neighbourhoods where people live and where people are.” On the fourth Wednesday of the month, the schedule brings them to Brownsville. By 9 am, a table is set up on the pavement displaying condoms, leaflets outlining available services and a sharps box for disposing of used needles. Eric Fairchild, an HIV prevention specialist, is on hand to explain what’s available and to use his experience of growing up in Brooklyn to put potential clients at ease. Fairchild’s job is to be on the frontline. Or at least the pavement. He grew up on these streets, he knows the people and the language. It is his job to engage passers-by, distributing leaflets and explaining the services on offer. He uses his own history of substance abuse to spot people in need and to put them at ease, offering them a non-judgemental reception. He also knows the pitfalls they face, perhaps better than they do yet. “I know the consequences – the things they don’t know,” he said. “It’s not a textbook conversation,” he says of his technique. “I’m not talking in ABCs, I’m talking to them in a language they understand. That’s my benefit to the programme. I’m street savvy as well as educated in the classroom.” For those that make it inside the mobile clinic come away with a dignity pack – a plastic bag containing some of the essentials of daily life including a toothbrush, paste, soap, deodorant, juice, potato crisps and oatmeal. “It’s an incentive to get them to stop and look. People are hungry. Maybe they don’t have money to get to appointments, so we have two-ride metro card tickets,” says Fairchild. At every step, the staff try to put clients at ease, offering a relaxed environment where they can feel comfortable talking about intimate issues such as sex. Last year, the clinic saw more than 2000 clients enrol for services. In addition, staff reached more than 6800 people informally on the street and conducted more than 1400 HIV tests. “Once people meet us and come on, it breaks down the distrust that many people feel about the medical system,” says Zuercher. “It might not erase it, but at least between us and our clients they feel we are offering something that is useful to them and can make their lives a little bit better.” The mobile unit manages to include a small counselling room and a bigger space to hold meetings. But its days are numbered. A new truck is scheduled to come into service in the summer. It is all part of a strategy to ensure the very highest standards, says Zuercher. “Even though we gear our services to specific populations but what we strive to do is provide the highest possible quality services so that anybody who walks in here would feel like they were getting appropriate care and they were getting high-quality care.” Some patients use the mobile unit is an introduction to other services offered by Planned Parenthood, setting up appointments at clinics or getting help with sources of funding to manage the costs of HIV care. For Zuercher the most rewarding clients are the ones who return to the mobile unit year after year. “It means a lot to be able to keep engaging with people, seeing how their life is developing in a positive way.” Watch Project Street Beat in action

Planned Parenthood partners with Queens libraries to bring sex education out of the classroom and into the library. The partnership employs the library's traditional role as a source of information creating a safe space for today's teenagers to ask for support.   Photography © IPPF/Bill Kotsatos Taking sex education to teens in Queens, NY

When Gary Hawkins began working at the library he assumed he would help teenagers with their homework or use his experience as DJ G Money to encourage them to pursue an interest in music.  He discovered his duties were much broader when a teenage girl approached him for help. Her boyfriend had been arrested and she believed she was pregnant.  Mr Hawkins knew what to do. Providing a listening ear and support, he talked to her about the different types of health services available in the New York borough of Queens, referring her to counselling.  Mr Hawkins, a youth counsellor at Queens Library for Teens, was one of the first to benefit from a ground-breaking partnership with Planned Parenthood of New York City to help answer those tricky questions.  It employs the library’s traditional role as a source of information and builds on the trust fostered by staff like him to make sure today’s teenagers - or anyone else - know they can ask for support.  Staff at Queens Library branches have received training in how to handle questions about everything from sexually transmitted diseases to gender identity.   Mr Hawkins said he never expected to face such a range of issues.  “When they first hired me I was thinking about music mostly, I’m a youth counsellor so I expected to talk to the kids and help out with homework, I’m thinking music questions, studio stuff, but every day is something different. Me and those kids build relationships." The idea for the tie-up came from Tamara Michel, a community health co-ordinator at Queens Library.   Librarians would come to her when they needed advice on tricky questions about health, sexuality and identity.  “A lot of times if people didn’t know the answer to a health-related question or if they didn’t know where to find that information, it would come back to me,” she said. “I think maybe several years ago, people thought, ‘Oooh, can I answer that question?’”  Staff wanted to help but no-one wanted to say the wrong thing or be accused of promoting personal values – a frequent worry around the subject of abortion, for example, a politically contentious issue.   Those questions are particularly fraught in Queens. The borough has long been regarded as New York’s melting pot, home to immigrant communities from Latin America to the Far East, all with different religious and cultural values.  In 2012 Ms Michel approached Planned Parenthood of New York City for help.  The first step was to develop a set of 15 guiding principles that reflected library values and gave staff a solid foundation from which to address the issues. They include encouraging young people to talk to a parent or a trusted adult, to demonstrate acceptance of all sexual orientations, to communicate in a respectful manner and when to refer customers to other services.  “It’s a framework so that all of our staff can be on the same page, making sure we are sending clear and consistent messages around health and sexuality,” said Ms Michel.  That went hand in hand with 18 hours of training for the first tranche of staff. They learned how to set questioners at ease by validating and normalising their questions, saying things like “that's a good question” or "a lot of people wonder that".   Melissa Malanuk, co-ordinator of teen services, said the training had given her a skillset and a level of comfort and confidence to take control of the conversation.  “Like when someone asks you something then you repeat the question, which sort of sets the tone that this is an OK conversation for us to have - it’s acceptable and I’m not judging you on this,” she said.  Almost 200 staff, representing all of the library’s branches, have been trained since the programme began. Planned Parenthood has also helped identify books, brochures and links to health providers.  Randa Dean, Senior Director of Adult and Professional Services at Planned Parenthood of New York City, said the partnership was a natural fit.   Bringing sex education out of the classroom and into the library made sense, she said, when so many people were already bringing their questions to librarians.  “They may not know where to go for this information so they are going to the place they trust the most, and there’s no reason why the staff at the library and librarians can’t provide that basic information for them,” she said.  "They are a trusted resource and with a little bit of partnership from us they have built their ability to be basic providers of that information, and they can connect to the more expert provision.”  Some library staff needed more convincing than others, but the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive.  Kacper Jarecki, community library manager at the South Hollis branch, said it was simply an extension of the role played by libraries through history.  “We have a lot of books, a lot of materials that are open to us. “So of course, we are fans of having people educated and knowing what kinds of options and choices they have.”  The most important factor is the human touch and a safe environment to ask questions.  Even internet-savvy New York teenagers needed that, said Ms Malanuk.   “If you don’t know what you don’t know, how do you find the right answer? Your smartphone’s not going to do that for you,” she said.