The 5th Annual One Voice: Reproductive Health and Population Summit just took place last weekend in Washington DC, during wh Advocates for Youth, Sierra Club and SIECUS partnered to train youth leaders to take action on sexual and reproductive health and rights, gender equity and environmental protection. While I participated in and led this conference for four years as a Sierra Club Organizer, I always wondered: how do youth in the Global South see the connections among these issues, and what are they doing to take action?
For the past month I’ve attempted to learn the answer to this question, by interning for an organization called PHE-Ethiopia in Addis Ababa. PHE-Ethiopia is a coalition of over 30 organizations which advances integrated Population, Health and Environment (PHE) development approaches at policy and grassroots levels. The goal is to harmonize the relationship between people and nature, and holistically address Ethiopia’s combined challenges of high unmet need for family planning, land degradation, poverty and gender inequity.

Last week I traveled 8 hours south of Addis to the rural Bale region of Southeastern Ethiopia, to find out what’s being done. As in many parts of rural Ethiopia, there is a high unmet need for adolescent reproductive health services. Many girls marry at age 14, and many youth don’t know how to prevent HIV/AIDS. The majority of couples don’t use family planning services because they believe they must have “all the children that God sends them.” With large families and small land plots, people are increasingly forced to cut trees to feed and provide for their families. Many aren’t aware of the surrounding Bale Mountain National Park’s ecological significance, containing a watershed with rivers that flow to over 10 million people. If deforestation and impending climate change dry up these precious water supplies, drought and famine could lead to the displacement or death of millions of Ethiopian citizens.

Since 2005, PHE-Ethiopia’s member organization, Movement for Ecological and Community Action (MELCA) has been working to protect the environment in Bale through research, advocacy, and their award-winning youth environmental education program called Social Empowerment through Group and Nature Interaction (SEGNI). In March 2008, with funding from Engender Health and the Packard Foundation, MELCA added a reproductive health component to their environmental repertoire, providing PHE trainings to students, community members and leaders. I visited Fincaa Banoo Elementary School, where 178 students age 10-24 from the Women’s Club, Anti-AIDS Club and SEGNI Club have joined together to form the “PHE Club.” They plant indigenous trees for community distribution, and create dramas, story-boards and songs about the importance of family planning. Fatiye, a 21-year old female PHE Club leader in 8th grade, said “Before PHE, I’d been working only on SEGNI and knew only about biodiversity and culture. But now, I clearly understand health and population issues, including HIV/AIDS, taught to me by my peers. By having the integration of clubs, we’ve strengthened our power to accomplish more.”