Pathfinder International works in 23 countries throughout Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Asia and the Near East, providing women, men, and adolescents with access to quality family planning and reproductive health information and services. Pathfinder works to halt the spread of HIV/AIDS, to provide care to women suffering from the complications of unsafe abortion, and to advocate for sound reproductive health policies in the U.S. and abroad.
By partnering with local governments and grassroots organisations, Pathfinder creates programmes that are responsive to the health needs of individual communities. For example, in isolated rural areas, Pathfinder trains community members to provide their neighbours with contraceptive services and reproductive health counselling in their own homes. With Pathfinder’s support, young women who come to hospital emergency rooms suffering from botched illegal abortions receive live-saving treatment and are provided with counselling and contraception before they leave the hospital.
Major projects include:
- The African Youth Alliance (AYA): a five-year initiative to improve adolescent reproductive health and reduce the spread of HIV/AIDS in Botswana, Ghana, Uganda, and Tanzania
- CATALYST Consortium: works with individuals and communities to increase the use of sustainable, quality sexual and reproductive health services and healthy practices through clinical and non-clinical programmes
- FOCUS on young adults: a six-year program (ending in 2001) to improve programming for adolescent reproductive health in 28 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa and the Asia/Near East regions. Led by Pathfinder International in partnership with the Futures Group International and Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, and funded by USAID
- PAC Consortium: works to inform the reproductive health community about health concerns related to unsafe abortion, and to promote post-abortion care as an effective strategy for addressing this global problem
- Yellow Card: a film created to educate African adolescents about unplanned pregnancy, unsafe abortion, and HIV/AIDS, which debuted in 2000 winning the People’s Choice Award at the 2000 Zanzibar Film Festival
Beginning in 2000, Pathfinder International reorganised the focus of its work to cover five key programme priority areas: access, AIDS, advocacy, abortion and adolescents.