PATHFINDER INTERNATIONAL:
PROVIDING REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH SERVICES FOR OVER 40 YEARS

The worldwide demand for family planning and reproductive health 
services continues to grow as the world's population approaches 6 
billion people. Pathfinder International, a nonprofit organization, works 
with institutions all over the world to create and improve access to the 
fullest possible range of quality information and services to enable 
individuals and couples to make reproductive health choices.

Pathfinder provides funding, technical leadership, and support in 
clinical training, service delivery, quality of care, financial management, 
institutional development, and sustainability to partner organizations in 
Africa, Asia and the Near East, Latin America and the Caribbean.

Since its founding in 1957, Pathfinder International has worked with 
hundreds of organizations, from national ministries of health to small, 
local non-governmental family planning agencies, improving access to 
services for women and men and hard to reach and underserved groups, 
such as young adults, commercial sex workers and rural populations. 
Pathfinder supports organizations, whatever size, that have the greatest 
potential to deliver high quality family planning and reproductive health 
services to those with the greatest need. 

Often in challenging circumstances, Pathfinder has continued to carry 
out its central mission: extending family planning and reproductive health 
services to as many individuals as possible throughout the world. 

Providing Reproductive Choices for People Worldwide

Last year Pathfinder worked in 35 countries with funding from a 
variety of donors. This support enabled Pathfinder to provide 
contraceptives to over 5 million new users, train 29,170 service 
providers, over 16,000 community leaders and others, and provide 
management assistance to 107 local partners.

The demand for contraception and reproductive health services in most 
developing countries continues to outpace supply. Women and couples 
who want to limit family size or space their next pregnancy, but who do 
not have access to family planning face excruciating choices - especially 
in countries where women have only recently begun to express their 
needs. In the developing world, limited access to family planning results 
in high rates of unplanned pregnancy, millions of unsafe abortions and 
thousands of maternal deaths. Pathfinder believes the best way to help 
women and couples achieve their desired family size is to increase their 
range of contraceptive choices.

Increasing access to services means finding the best way to deliver 
services in a community, district or country. Pathfinder trains and funds 
community-based workers who visit families in their homes and 
communities, telling women about available contraceptives, sexually 
transmitted disease prevention, prenatal care and other services. They tell 
women and men about clinic or hospital services and sometimes help 
take them to local facilities. Pathfinder also supports clinics and hospitals 
where IUDs and Norplant implants, along with surgical contraception 
(vasectomy and tubal ligation), prenatal and postpartum care, and 
sexually transmitted disease information and services are available. 

Reaching Out 

Finding the best way to reach people sometimes means going to their 
workplaces. Pathfinder helps set up weekly clinics where people - often 
men - can receive information about the benefits of family planning, 
including that using a condom can prevent pregnancy and sexually 
transmitted diseases. In Tanzania, for example, half a million workers 
learn about family planning and receive counseling for HIV-AIDS from 
providers at their work sites.

Another highly effective way to introduce family planning is to offer it 
when women are thinking about their family size and are receptive to the 
idea of preventing or delaying their next birth. Experience demonstrates 
that the postpartum period presents an ideal opportunity. Through 
Pathfinder's postpartum strategy, counselors discuss a client's desires for 
family size and contraception at appropriate prenatal visits, after delivery 
and at the six-week checkup. Pathfinder also works to make these 
programs part of the regular care offered at hospitals. 

While abortion is illegal in most of the countries where Pathfinder 
works, the estimated number of unsafe abortions performed worldwide 
each year is 20 million. Women who have just had an abortion, or who 
are experiencing the complications of an infection after an unsafe 
abortion, are at high risk for a repeat pregnancy. These women are often 
very receptive to the idea of family planning, but the window of 
opportunity to reach them is limited. Those who come to public hospitals 
suffering from incomplete induced abortions may be at risk of arrest and 
imprisonment and are usually frightened and ashamed. They are anxious 
to receive treatment and leave as quickly as possible.

Like its postpartum programs, Pathfinder's postabortion programs are
 focused on improving care offered in public hospitals, where the
 poorest women go. They include special counseling training for nurses
 and midwives, teaching doctors new, more modern methods of treating
 incomplete abortions and offering family planning to women right in the
 emergency room before they go home.

Adolescent Programs

Today, one third of the populations of Latin America and Asia and 
nearly one half of Africa's population are under the age of 15. As this 
burgeoning group moves into its childbearing years in the next century, 
meeting its reproductive health care needs takes on increasing urgency. 
For more than 20 years, Pathfinder has pioneered the best ways to create 
innovative, effective programs for young adults. 

Pathfinder works with parents and religious leaders in Asia to educate 
families about the health risks of childbearing at young ages. In much of 
Latin America, the best way to serve young people is to offer care 
through health clinics or hospitals. In African cultures, an effective way 
to reach youth is through schools and universities. Another is through 
community centers and outreach sites. 

Pathfinder expanded its adolescent programs in 1998. In Peru, together 
with its FOCUS on Young Adults Program, Pathfinder collaborated with 
the Ministries of Health and Education to train service providers in 
health clinics and develop a sex education curriculum for secondary 
schools. As part of this initiative, more than 200 midwives, nurses and 
doctors from five regions have been trained so far. 

Pathfinder has also implemented several successful peer education 
programs at colleges and universities, resulting in the reduction of 
unwanted pregnancies. These programs have also provided students with 
otherwise unavailable information on AIDS and other sexually 
transmitted diseases. Additionally, the peer education programs have 
made an impact on attitudes beyond the campuses, as young people 
discuss what they have learned with their elders.

Over 40 Years of Experience

Pathfinder International, originally called the Pathfinder Fund was 
founded by Dr. Clarence J. Gamble in 1957. For decades before, Dr. 
Gamble and his colleagues dedicated countless hours and thousands of 
dollars to expanding the availability of voluntary family planning services 
in the US and abroad. Providing funds for contraceptive research in this 
country, offering encouragement and stipends to family planning 
pioneers in Japan, India and other countries, making "seed" grants to 
fledgling family planning associations in over 30 developing countries, 
and advocating the cause of family planning everywhere, Pathfinder's 
founder charted the course for the organization's future work.

During its early decades, Pathfinder was wholly funded by private 
contributions from individuals and foundations. In the late 1960s, when 
US foreign assistance funds were allocated for population programs, 
Pathfinder began to receive funding through the United States Agency 
for International Development (USAID). Throughout the last three 
decades, Pathfinder's support from USAID has increased, significantly 
enabling program expansion. 

After 40 years, Pathfinder International's commitment to increasing the 
availability of voluntary reproductive health services remains steadfast. 
Pathfinder continues the quest to make quality family planning services a 
reality for all by encouraging the work of family planning pioneers 
around the world, providing institutional support and assistance to 
service providers and advocating on behalf of families around the world.

Career Opportunities at Pathfinder International

As one of the largest international aid organizations in the world with 
22 offices in the US, Asia, Africa and Latin America, Pathfinder has a 
wide variety of career opportunities for professionals in the field of 
family planning and reproductive health.

Pathfinder employs hundreds of public health experts and other medical 
personnel, as well as educators and trainers, resource and fund-raising 
specialists, and administrative personnel. Pathfinder also provides 
employment opportunities for natives of the countries in which it 
operates, allowing them to serve the needs of people in their own 
communities. 

Whether they are working directly with clients in the field or in 
Pathfinder's headquarters in Watertown, Massachusetts, all of Pathfinder 
International's employees are committed to the organization's three 
long-term goals: to improve access to reproductive health care, improve 
the quality of services provided, and improve the sustainability of local 
organizations worldwide. Pathfinder's employees, donors, and partners 
work together to ensure that women and couples everywhere can get the 
reproductive health services they need, no matter where they live, their 
income or their age; to provide a good standard of services with fully-
trained staff; and to create organizations that will be able to continue to 
offer services independently in the future.