Transforming humanitarian action

At Bihar, we believe that when we invest in the holistic health of women, we are investing in the health of the whole community. We have been providing Syrian women gynaecological, obstetrics and maternal health services through our primary health clinics since 2013.

In our clinics we found that we were regularly treating women who are misinformed about reproductive health, need psychosocial support, or who are survivors of gender based violence. However, access to protection services for women is scarce, awareness around issues of well-being is very low, and there is a great reluctance within communities to speak out about and seek help for violations. As a result, many women are suffering in silence.

The United Nations developed a protection program for women to address psychosocial well-being, gender-based violence and reproductive health, and in 2016 we trained our health workers in Afrin, rural Aleppo, to begin offering these services to the community through our existing primary health centre.

In making protection services available, we found women were being offered the right kind of support to help them, and there was growing acceptance amongst the community for women to seek protection. 

Why we need your support

Capitalising on our successes in Afrin, we want to expand our programme to reach a new community in Ma’arin, in rural Aleppo. We will train two of our health workers so that they can provide much-needed protection services to women in the community through our already established primary health-care clinic.

Our health workers will offer women one-to-one or group counselling sessions at the clinic, together with undertaking home visits to women reluctant to attend the clinic in person. 

We will also deliver group sessions to the community, particularly men, in order to educate and raise awareness of the importance of women’s protection, enabling the whole community to support women seeking protection services.

Finally, we will develop a child-friendly space, with concealed entrance within the primary health-care clinic to encourage women providing care for their children to visit and access services without stigma. 

With your contribution, we can support women in Ma’arin and transform lives.

Our budget

Project field staff     £3,510
Stationary & training material     £857
IT equipment     £858
Communication     £187
Hospitality     £199
Child-friendly space     £2,184
Core costs     £780
Exchange rate & transfer fees     £1,060
Grand Total     £9,635

As an organisation we do not have any other access to direct funding, that is why crowdfunding is incredibly important for us in order to raise money quickly for essential health projects. Because of this lack of direct funding, if we do not reach our fundraising target the project cannot go ahead - we simply do not have any other method to ‘top-up’ to the budget required. For more info on this - please see CanDo’s FAQs ‘What is all-or-nothing crowdfunding?’ and ‘What happens if a campaign doesn’t reach its target?’ 

Please support us however you can. Thank you.

#ProtectWomen

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