The Family Planning and Sexual Health Association

The Family Planning and Sexual Health Association (the Association) is the only non-governmental organization in Lithuania taking care of sexual and reproductive rights and health of the community and especially of youth. The Association was founded in 1995 and it unites more than 200 members of different specialities: physicians, pedagogues, psychologists, journalists, etc.

The Association:

is seeking that families in Lithuania would be healthy and happy, the babies would be expected, healthy, and be loved;

is promoting awareness of the community of the family planning, sexual and reproductive health;

is seeking that the number of abortions in the country would be as low as possible;

is defending rights of people and families to the necessary information in order they could consciously and freely choose the most suitable contraception, i.e. to plan the family;

is seeking that both men and women, and especially young people would be healthy, would know how to protect themselves against unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, would know how to use and would use the up-to-date contraception means;

is taking care that the sexual education of the youth would be efficient.

The Association:

organizes
lectures, seminars, courses, conferences;

publishes
written and visual information material;

prepares
projects and programmes;

organizes and attends
republican and international arrangements.

Carrying out its activities the Association is following the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development held in 1994 in Cairo which underlines the importance of the community's sexual and reproductive health as well as of the family planning, needs and rights of women as the necessary condition of the community's development, the resolutions adopted at the Fourth Beijing World Conference held in 1995 paying special attention to the issues of women's equality in all spheres of life, the recommendations of the World Health Organization, the Charter of Sexual and Reproductive Rights of the International Planned Parenthood Federation.

The Family Planning and Sexual Health Association in Lithuania is a member of the International Planned Parenthood Federation and it is cooperating with 30 European and 140 family planning associations world-wide.

The Association is cooperating with all governmental and non-governmental organizations which are taking care of human rights and health.

The Association is organizing regularly the training courses on the issues of reproductive health to physicians, midwives and nurses, teachers.


Projects

The Association is successfully carrying out the programme of youth sexual education at five youth health education centres in the largest Lithuanian cities: Vilnius, Kaunas, Klaipėda, Šiauliai, and Panevėžys. In accordance with this project these centres are operating in the premises of the health education centres of the cities. Adult coordinators are managing the activity of the centres. The adolescents volunteers trained during special courses (which are hold by experienced physicians, pedagogues, psychologists) disseminate information about reproductive - sexual health among their peers. In accordance with the sexual education programme to different school children age groups (from 11 to 18 years old) prepared by the Association the attendants of the programme can listen the education course on the following topics: pubescence and hygiene, sexuality and personal sexual vision, responsibility of the young man and girl starting sexual life, contraception, prevention of sexually transmitted infections and AIDS, drug and smoking prevention, human reproductive - sexual rights. The volunteers educators give lectures in the centre and at schools, arrange creative sessions and discussions with their peers, organize different arrangements (such as AIDS Day, Health Day, etc.). The Association publishes information material for the youth (leaflets, booklets, books).

This initiative is not a new one world-wide and is very progressive since the information delivered in such way is more acceptable to the youth.

In one year the Youth Health Education Centres established relations with 20 - 30 Lithuanian schools, carried out more than one thousand discussions about reproductive health with 30 - 40 thousand young people.