YouTube Video Volunteers and AllForGood

If you arrived here after hearing about us as part of the All For Good / YouTube Video Volunteers program, welcome!  Actually, even if you arrived here by some other means, you are still welcome. As the Vlog Brothers noted in their video, this is all about making the world "suck less."  And one way to do this is for everyone, everywhere to have access to family planning—a/k/a contraception, birth control, pills, condoms, IUDS, you get the idea—when and where they need and want it. 

EngenderHealth’s Video Volunteers assignment for you is to explain why Americans should care about international family planning.  Help us get the word out about this fundamental right that literally saves lives.

Why International Family Planning?
Most Americans take family planning for granted.  We know what a difference it makes in our lives to be able to decide when and how many children to have.  But for hundreds of millions of people in developing countries, family planning is both a luxury and a dream.  So let’s dream with them – and work together so that this basic right is a reality for everyone!  If everyone who family planning was able to use it, we could:

• Save women’s lives: each year, more than 500,000 women worldwide die during pregnancy or childbirth.  Thirteen percent of these deaths result from unsafe abortions.  With greater access to contraception, unwanted pregnancies and maternal deaths can be greatly reduced.
• Reduce poverty: smaller families mean that parents can invest more in each child: nutrition and health care can improve, more children can go to school and stay in school – especially girls.  Families can begin to break out of the cycle of poverty. 
• Reduce environmental strain: population growth can put a strain on natural resources, leading to  water shortages, deforestation, and animal extinction. 
• Reduce civil and political conflict: poor countries with high population growth experience the most strife. When individuals, and women in particular, can plan their families and have more opportunities to earn a living, vulnerability to civil conflict decreases.
• Improve the health and prospects of young people: the largest generation of youth ever is coming of age.  Evidence shows that in dozens of countries, young women’s demand for contraception is growing faster than the demand in any other age group.  But the ability to meet this demand does not exist.  And that’s tragic.
  
• Improve education and literacy: with smaller families, parents can afford to send their children to school, improving their prospects for the future.
• Reduce abortion: when women and couples have access to contraception, they can prevent unwanted pregnancies, thus reducing the number of abortions.

Learn more about how EngenderHealth expands access to family planning methods around the world. You can also learn more about international family planning over at 3FOR1.

How can I help?
If you have seen EngenderHealth’s YouTube channel, you know that we have made a few videos already. But there is so much more to say, and so many ways to say it:  Your voice and ideas will lend a fresh perspective to this crucial human rights issue.  Can you help us get people talking? Inspire them to act? Make them care as much as we do?

EngenderHealth welcomes videos of any kind, and they can be uploaded YouTube as “public” and the link emailed to video@engenderhealth.org with the text “YouTube Video Volunteers” in the subject line.  Everyone who submits an on-topic video will receive an honorary one-year membership to EngenderHealth. Select videos will be added to our “Favorites” and highlighted on our web site.

You can also become a member of EngenderHealth!  Click here to learn more.