This month, Project Muso’s Moishe Community Health Promoters are training in family planning skills. Mali has one of the highest birth rates in the world, and one of the highest child mortality rates in the world. In this context family planning is an issue of great importance to the women who are training in our program.

One of our Community Health Promoters in training, Kaja, lives in a small one-room home. She struggles so much to support her two sons—she recently told me that she does not want to have any more children, that two is enough; she wants to be able to provide for them and support them to stay in school and succeed, and it is difficult enough for her to support her two sons. For the next two weeks, our Community Health Promoters in training are going to be learning a wide array of family planning techniques through focused instruction from Project Muso’s Peer Educator Team, through discussions about family planning in their communities and their lives, and through role-plays.

In a context of extreme poverty and no social security, many parents come to depend on having many children to work, provide income for the family, and care for them in their old age. Thus, studies have shown that parents often choose to have smaller families when their economic situation is more stable. Project Muso understands that the health and economic stability of families in Mali are closely tied, and this is why we provide all participants with business training in addition to health training.