U of G student gathers Canadian support in fight for women’s reproductive rights
When Ghaid Asfour started volunteering with the non-profit organization Plan International Canada, she simply wanted to enact some gender equality in her daily life. Asfour has been volunteering with Plan since high school and will begin her second year at the University of Guelph, where she studies biomedical toxicology. Asfour aspires to attend medical school and work with Doctors Without Borders. Currently, Asfour spends her time promoting maternal and newborn health in some of the most under-resourced communities on the planet through her volunteer work.She is a youth advocate for Plan, an organization widely known for its campaigns supporting female empowerment and gender equality, notably the Because I Am a Girl campaign. Asfour recently shared her experiences as a youth advocate for Plan in an interview with The Ontarion.Ella Harvey: What is Plan International Canada, and what do you do as a youth advocate?
Ghaid Asfour: Plan is an international humanitarian non-profit that organizes gender equality projects around the world. One of their more recent projects is called Change the Birth Story, through which we’re trying to improve the health of pregnant mothers, adolescent girls, and newborn babies in Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, Bangladesh, and Haiti.
My job as a youth advocate is to engage the Canadian public and raise awareness about the issue of women’s reproductive health, as many Canadians don’t know how difficult and how urgent the situation is. For example, every two minutes, a pregnant woman dies because of complications related to pregnancy and childbirth, and most of those complications are preventable. We’ve therefore outlined a set of goals with these five countries through Change the Birth Story that address this problem, goals which we hope to accomplish at the end of the project.
EH: Can you tell me about these goals?
GA: Sure! The overall goal of Change the Birth Story is to break three different barriers to women’s reproductive health in developing countries. The first barrier starts at home, and it’s due to the lack of knowledge of when it’s necessary to get help, coupled with the lack of power to make decisions. Pregnancy is a painful process overall, so women don’t always know intuitively when things are not okay. Sometimes, when women do notice that something is wrong, they can’t always seek help because they may have to take care of other children, they may not be allowed to leave the house without permission, or the person making the decisions in the house may not approve of going to the hospital. If a woman is able to overcome that first barrier, the second barrier that she may face would be a lack of transportation to the hospital or healthcare facility. Many of these women don’t have access to vehicles and inclement weather or unsafe roads may not permit walking. The third barrier she might face is at the health facility itself, as most of the time these facilities don’t have enough trained staff and also lack appropriate equipment and medications.One of the biggest parts of this third barrier is that the wait times at healthcare centers are very long due to the under-resourced nature of these facilities. If women already know that the wait times will be long, they may not even make the effort to make the trip in the first place. In my opinion, the first barrier is the most difficult because it’s not physical, whereas the other two are.
EH: So, what does Plan intend to do to break these barriers?
GA: To break the first barrier, we’ll be encouraging mothers to seek help in the first place. We have also established fatherhood groups to engage fathers and male partners in the pregnancy and childbirth process, as men tend to not be very involved with decision making during this time. In these ‘fatherhood clubs,’ we educate men in the community about what they can do to facilitate their partner’s health during the childbirth process. Another thing we’ll do is provide an Uber-like system, where we’ll fund community members that already own vehicles to transport pregnant mothers to healthcare facilities.In terms of the facilities themselves, we can help train medical staff and provide them with affordable equipment.
EH: Is there a reason why Plan is currently focusing on maternal and newborn health as opposed to other problems such as poverty, clean water, or school building?
GA: We actually asked communities in these countries to rate different ideas for projects that could be implemented in their community, and increasing maternal and newborn health was ranked very highly in all five of these countries. So, in a way, it’s not really up to us — we just try to provide what the communities have asked for.
EH: How do you know that this campaign will have lasting impact in these communities?
GA: We work with political and religious community leaders to effect change because these leaders know about the traditions and culture of their own community, as well as the best ways to get people on board with the project. Working with these leaders ensures that we get through to people. In terms of getting men on board, we’ve found that men tend to be interested in helping their partners once they realize how much their involvement is needed.
EH: What made you want to get involved with Plan?
GA: I got involved with Plan because I have struggled with gender inequality myself. I had my first encounter with gender inequality in elementary school when I was denied enrollment in a martial arts class because I was a girl, even though as a kid I had always really wanted to do martial arts. Later, when I was the only girl in my grade 11 computer science class, I found that my opinion was often ignored, dismissed, or not given the value it deserved. I decided it was time to do something, so I Googled gender equality organizations in the GTA and Plan came up, so I applied and got in. As someone who encountered gender inequality at a very young age, and continues to struggle with it on a daily basis starting from my own home, I have realized that I have a tremendous amount of passion and motivation to create change.This project is a way for me to turn my frustration into action. It is a way for me to be proactive and effect change instead of being solely reactive and waiting for change to happen. It’s a way for me to be a part of the change, which is a genuinely rewarding feeling.
EH: What have you learned so far as a youth advocate for Plan?
GA: I’ve learned a lot! First of all, I have gained a lot of knowledge about the barriers pregnant mothers face in many countries and how so many of them are rooted in power imbalances and gender inequality. I also learned how to use appropriate language and terminology when talking about victimized women in dire situations, which was something I was completely oblivious to before joining Plan. Besides gaining knowledge, information, and statistics, I have learned how to empathize with people without necessarily having shared their experiences and struggles.And finally, I learned that education is one of the most important steps to creating real change. I’ve learned that so many barriers and gaps exist simply because people aren’t informed and educated enough.
EH: Do you have a role model who inspired you to promote gender equality?
GA: I don’t know if I could pick one person, but my mom would be a great example. She’s an engineer, but her family wasn’t very supportive of her going to university as she was one of the first females to go in her family. After her degree she started her own business with no financial or emotional support, even though she also had to look after three kids. Right now, she has her own computer programming school in Mississauga called the Future Generation. She’s so determined and optimistic all the time, and she maintains an amazing attitude all the time.
EH: What do you hope to accomplish as a youth advocate?
GA: My goal as a youth advocate is to collect at least 500 endorsements for this campaign from Canadians by May 2019. I’ve been attending community events to spread the word and collect physical signatures, but I’ve also been encouraging people to electronically endorse the campaign on the Plan website.
EH: In your opinion, why should people get involved in projects like this?
GA: My opinion is that if you really want to care about something, you should give yourself a chance to. Volunteer with something that you’ve never dealt with before, learn about what other people go through, and try to see the world through their perspective. You’ll be surprised, you’ll get excited about things you never thought you’d get excited about. And at the end of the day, you’re going to remember those experiences more than anything else.