Ipas South Africa

As a young refugee girl living in South Africa, I had several abortions due to lack of knowledge and access to long acting reversible contraceptive methods. Consequently, at age 30 I had an avoidable hysterectomy. Currently, as a recognized refugee in South Africa, an executive, a co-founder of 3 entities, a wife, a mother of two beautifully powerful young women. I recognize the urgency, value and rights for young women and girls in Africa to have access to  quality education, safe, quality and comprehensive sexual reproductive health services.

When selected as a winner, I would expand the current reach of these services by building a tech platform for private and public sector providers in rural and under resourced communities to collaborate in their district to ensure women and girls receive, quality education before a virtual consults, two way referrals for safe sexual reproductive health services wherever they.  

The platform will enable our current public and private partnership initiative in South Africa with the technology dimension to attract, support and increase women SRH education and access among the youth. 

Half of the resources will be invested into this venture within the organization and another to a personal, yet complimentary mission.

I am a refugee living in South Africa for 23 years. A servant leader, who has been entrusted with a vision greater than self into several leadership. I have been in senior leadership positions and board level executive for over 12years. Co-founded 3 entities during this time all driven toward improving access to quality education, leadership development; safe and quality SRH and financial services for women and girls in Africa. I have been in the business of empowering complete leaders; specifically women and girls for over 13 years. During this time I have personally, reached more than 10000 thousand women through monthly meetings; coaching, mentoring and teaching. The aim is to build women who are resilient and determined to win in all areas of their life. Reached even more women with my live - talk show on Facebook and You Tube; RealTalk with Caroline; a peer-coaching conversational model toward empowering women to be solution focused with a growth mindset.

Determined to reach every girl and woman (Targeting refugees where possible) Leaving No Woman Behind!

My background in governance, spiritual leadership and organizational leadership as well community builder enables me to bring diverse players to the table for this mission.

Our mission is to expand access to safe, quality sexual and reproductive health services, including comprehensive abortion care to women and girls. 

Good sexual reproductive health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being relating to the reproductive system. It implies having a satisfied and safe sex life, the capability to reproduce, the freedom to decide if, when, and how often to do so. To maintain one’s sexual and reproductive health, people need access to accurate information, safe, effective, affordable and acceptable contraception method of their choice.

Contraceptive access increased in parts of the world; Asia and Latin America, but continues to be low in sub-Saharan Africa. A quarter of women in sub-Saharan Africa currently use modern contraceptive methods. In SA, a proportion of women of reproductive age are protected against unplanned pregnancies, using modern contraceptive methods, though access has increased steadily from 26.3% in 2002/2003 to nearly 50% currently in 2019/20. Despite this improvement the rise in the number of terminations of pregnancy in SA in all groups suggests that substantial deficiencies remain in accessing family planning services. 25% of maternal deaths could be averted with access to modern methods of contraception by pregnant women and girls

Ipas SA, became a local entity in 2002 with a transition plan which ended in 2020. Ipas South Africa’s strategic plan is based on the organization’s mission, vision and goals. The strategic framework outlines what Ipas South Africa wants to achieve and how the achievement will be realized. 

This history makes us unique with technically sound tools, policy and processes that separates us from others. We fortunate that not many local organizations are bold enough to be frontline technical providers and advocates for women's access to comprehensive and quality sexual and reproductive health services including abortion care.

Our Work has become even more innovative due to COVID-19. We continue to expand our training model. We have transitioned training of clinicians completely virtually. While practical trainings continues to face-to-face  upholding the necessary COVID guidelines to ensure standards are maintained. The hub owned and hosted with the National department enables us to train 800 individual online at one go this model drives sustainability of services for women and girls in SA.

With the support from this award we are aiming to expand access to information and actual consult online as well with an enhances national platform.

Firstly, we are determined to leave no woman behind. Through our work, we are addressing 3 main Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 3,4,5 and 10). Core to our approach is sustaining efforts to improve women and girls access across all works of life and especially refugee girls. A strong partnership with the national department of health has been critical. 

Ipas SA had reached over 100 thousand women and girls with SRH services including abortion care in the last 4 years.

1. Policy review and development of national guidelines

2. Development of comprehensive and quality SRH training curriculum which includes our cutting edge curriculum on Values Clarification for all involved in SRHR

3. Technical assistance to the national department of health and provincial departments develop and strengthen public and private sector collaborative models to increase access and quality services for women and girls

4. We are intentional about visible partnership scorecard. To ensure we champion forging strong partnerships with other local organization to drive and entrench the mission at all levels including the social services and civil society

These approaches are anchored on the Ipas sustainability and eco-systemic approach. To ensure broad base of stakeholder's participation in driving the agenda.