FASU Consultancy
About FAMLIORIGIN
FAMLI is a community-based NGO, rooted in the partnership between FASU CONSULTANCY, Lilongwe, and MATERNAL LIFE INTERNATIONAL, Butte, Montana, USA,
FASU CONSULTANCY is the arm of the Registered Trustees of the Society of Jesus in Malawi, part of an international Catholic religious order, for their family and AIDS-related development work.
FASU means Family Planning by Fertility Awareness and Selective Use. The aims of FASU Consultancy include providing up-to-date information about Scientific Natural Family Planning and reproductive health education, emphasising sexual abstinence before marriage and fidelity within it as the only sure means of avoiding HIV infection.
MATERNAL LIFE INTERNATIONAL (Butte, Montana) is incorporated in the USA. It deals with every aspect of maternal health from pregnancy to childbirth and beyond. MLI also support programmes in Cameroon, Swaziland, Ghana, South Africa, Uganda and Mexico.
Though it is a faith-based agency, FAMLI is open to all and its AIDS Cultural Change Programme is a humanitarian project where everybody is welcome.
AIMS
FAMLI’s aims are common to FASU Consultancy and MLI:
a. To foster the idea of marriage as a loving, life-long union of one man and one woman, and the only setting in which sexual union finds its true meaning by procreating their children and bonding their love.
b. To provide education about fertility, HIV avoidance and natural family planning to adults and youth in a way appropriate to their human development and marital status, while emphasising the human, cultural and religious values and necessity of sexual self-mastery, abstinence before and faithfulness during marriage.
c. To complete the family planning menu by providing services to couples who wish to practise natural family planning.
d. To promote the cultural changes called for by Malawi’s HIV/AIDS Policy, Strategic Framework and Agenda for Action.
e. To provide sexual, family-related and reproductive health education for youth, with appropriate counselling and services.
f. To encourage Voluntary HIV Counselling and Testing.
PROGRAMMES
FAMLI's AIDS Cultural Change Programme, which began in October 2002, has three components:
CIRCLES OF LIFE includes
• Fertility/AIDS Awareness Education, including:
- the anatomy and physiology of human reproduction.
- a scientific understanding of sexuality.
- reflection on the meaning of sex in our total lives.
- how HIV is transmitted and avoided.
- abstinence outside marriage and fidelity within it,
the only sure way of avoiding HIV.
- need for Voluntary Counselling and Testing (VCT).
- destigmatisation of PLWAs.
- mother-to-child transmission of HIV.
- breastfeeding by a HIV-positive mother.
• Bead Method of natural family planning by Selective Use
Tikhale Moyo (Change for Life) GROUPS
These community-based focus groups discuss the customs that the National Policy identifies as HIV-dangerous and often collaborate in caring for the sick, widows and orphans, as well as in income generating and development projects.
The groups include on average 40 persons each.
YOUTH ALIVE
YOUTH ALIVE is a peer education movement which invites youth to decide to wait for sex until they are married.
STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES
FAMLI’s strengths are that:
1. it integrates all aspects of sexuality;
2. it is community based and reaches the grassroots by working through existing structures.
3. it has a clear and unambiguous message which corresponds to what both youth and adults know to be true;
4. it promotes the only 100% sure method of avoiding HIV, with a family planning method that is effective and highly acceptable to people who have experienced heavy side-effects from hormonal methods because of their low nutritional status.
5. through its Tikhale Moyo groups it has unexpectedly standard become an agent for development and an improved of living.
FAMLI’s weakness is its lack of trained staff, sufficient finances and equipment.
SOME STATISTICS
Cultural Change Educators 62
Field Centres/Supervisors 7)
Couples Trained 3655 (250)
Couples under instruction 1000
Couples awaiting instruction
3000
It is planned that these over 7500 contacts should rise to over 20,000 within two years
FAMLI has 21 Tikhale Moyo Groups and plans to have 75 in two years time
Youth Alive has conducted 37 Behaviour Change Workshops for about 1350 youths, trained over 150 Peer Educators and held Awareness Sessions over 1000 youths.
THERE IS A GROWING DEMAND FROM COMMUNITIES AND TRADITIONAL AUTHORITIES FOR THE EXTENSION OF FAMLI'S PROGRAMMES:
- AIDS Cultural Change Programme.
- Tikhale Moyo Groups
- Youth Alive
