What is the operating environment like on the ground right now?
Extremely challenging. A collapsed aqueduct tunnel outside of Cumana has left over 50% of our service areas without public water for months. Water-related illness is spreading, sanitation has deteriorated, and electricity rationing adds a daily burden. And yet our network keeps finding ways to deliver services. Our clients are counting on us, and that is something we take very seriously.
Turimiquire has increased its focus on youth this year - why?
It is not a policy shift, we still offer our services to everyone, we do not discriminate by age. But it is a recognition of where our work can bear the greatest fruit. We are responding to the largest needs of our target communities by increasing our focus on ages 12-24 where our services can have the highest impact. Working with young people to prevent unintended pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections is a highly cost-effective public health investment. So far in this focus, we have served 15,608 young people with family planning services, achieving 3,997 Couple Years of Protection. Our Sexual and Reproductive Health workshops keep expanding, reaching youth in high schools, community colleges, trade schools, and rural communities who often have no other access to this information. And in a society where childbearing often begins at a young age, the parents of these young people frequently still need family planning information and services themselves, which they share with their children. It is an educational continuum. |
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Are you expanding your adolescent health center in Cumaná?
We cofounded the Center in 2002 with FUNDASALUD, the state public health agency. It was created specifically for adolescents in a low-income neighborhood where young people had little access to quality reproductive health care. Both UNFPA and UNICEF have made material contributions to the facility over the years. An important milestone this year is a new private consultation space where adolescents can speak confidentially with psychologists and social workers about reproductive health, gender-based violence, substance abuse, and gender identity — a safe space designed for young people. It has also become the model for three additional adolescent centers now being developed in Cumaná — showing that a youth-centered approach works and can be replicated.
What types of contraceptives do youth choose these days?
Young people are making increasingly long-term choices. The biggest shift is towards Long Acting Reversible Contraception (LARC) — adolescents now represent 52% of our LARC clients, up from just 32% last year.That jump tells us that young people are thinking seriously about their futures. IUDs have recently surpassed implants in popularity among youth, being non-hormonal and highly cost effective.
Beyond contraception, what other health services do you provide to young people?
When adolescents come to us for family planning, they often arrive with other health burdens never previously addressed. We offer OB-GYN and other specialty evaluations, and a dedicated program for the surprising number of breast conditions in young women, which can include outpatient surgeries. For a low-income teenager, meeting these needs in a trusted, youth-friendly space is transformative. We are often the first real health care relationship many of these young people have.
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And your partnership with Vitala Global?
It's very exciting. We are consistently successful in disseminating Vitala's AYA CONTIGO family planning app in Venezuela – in many months, we rank number one nationally. Roughly 80% of our AYA audience are adolescents and young adults, at home in the digital world. Meeting young people on their phones, in their own space, is one of the most effective ways that we can reach them, especially in a poor, rural, and traditionally Catholic state like Sucre.
How is your rural High School program going?
We continue to support a remote public primary and high school located over an hour's walk from the road, up mountain trails crossing three rocky river fords. Our scholarship program annually helps up to 60 of these rural students attend high school, and selected students who continue into college! These students also work as multipliers for us, extending these educational opportunities to others.
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How do you plan to reach even more youth going forward?
We are always reaching out. We now serve adolescents in three neighboring states beyond the state of Sucre — Margarita Island (Nueva Esparta), the Barcelona–Puerto la Cruz area, and rural Monagas. Often, the young people we most want to reach are also the hardest to reach — living in remote rural communities, extremely poor,with no transportation and no margins to seek out services on their own. So we physically go to them. We want young people to have access to services that can change the trajectory of their lives.This is how we keep our promise to the next generation.
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A special thank you to:
The Erik and Edith Bergstrom Foundation,
Population Connection,
to other Family Foundations and Charitable Trusts,
and to our many individual donors,
for generously supporting our services portfolio.
We are making a difference together!
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Please
Donate to the Turimiquire Foundation Online
The more that we receive, the more that we can do.
The Turimiquire Foundation is a 501(C)(3) non-profit organization.
All contributions are fully tax-deductible.
Our Federal or Employment Identification Number is 04-3286660.
And remember, more than
93 cents of every dollar goes directly into the field.
PayPal or Venmo is the safe, easy way to donate online.
Click the button, type in the amount
and login to your PayPal or Venmo account.
Or you can use your credit card.
Please consider making this a recurring monthly donation.
You can do this online, and it is a real assist for us.
You can also contribute using
Turimiquire Foundation
turimiquirefoundation@gmail.com
Or you can mail your check,
payable to the Turimiquire Foundation,
to our U.S. office:
Turimiquire Foundation
William Bloomstein
16 Crescent Street
Cambridge, MA. 02138
USA
Comments, thoughts, advice?
Let us hear from you!
**** Gracias ****
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