The award-winning Fambula Initiative Network for Equality (FINE) is doing innovative work in Sierra Leone. They are working with men to turn around cultural norms that negatively impact women’s empowerment, including expanding their access to family planning and reproductive health services.
The Fambula Initiative Network for Equality (FINE) project runs “husband school,” where men are learning new ways to relate to their wives and daughters, which could have far-reaching benefits for their families—and for the people of Sierra Leone. FINE grew from an important insight, that too often, it is men who serve as the gatekeepers to women’s rights and health. From tribal chiefs who control community resources to husbands who beat their wives, men can be a formidable barrier to women’s empowerment. But men can also use their strength, and their power, to help women. Fine set out to reach and educate men by training hundreds of volunteer educators, who in turn have reached some 10,000 tribal chiefs, husbands and religious leaders. In village schools and courtyards across Sierra Leone. These husband schools teach men about the harmful effects of rape, gender-based violence, teen pregnancy and Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C), and encourage men to respect their wives’ childbearing preferences, to care for them throughout pregnancy and childbirth, and to make sure they give birth in a hospital.The FINE volunteers also work with policymakers to make women’s rights and health a reality. For example, through a partner with the ministry of health to arrange transport and lodging so that rural women can give birth in hospital.The blog reports dramatic results: villages where FINE volunteers work have seen a 60% decrease in maternal mortality, and there has been a 75% increase in hospital births, and contraceptive use is reported to have risen from 30 to 51%. To find out more, check our summary of FINE's report on teenage pregnancy and Female Genital Mutilation/Cuting (FGM/C) and the official FINE video.