English
SECS
International Planned Parenthood Federation
(IPPF) arrived in January 1990 in Romania, bringing two new concepts: access to contraception and FPA. As result, a group of Romanian people confronted in their professional or personal lives with the lack of access to abortion and contraception founded SECS. Most of them being medical doctors, mainly gynecologists, knew from their daily practice that thousands of women would have preferred to avoid an unwanted pregnancy instead of having to expose themselves to an abortion, especially under illegal circumstances. It became clear that and NGO should be created in order to respond to an unmet need of the population. Therefore the SECS was founded in 1990 with the help of the IPPF (International Planned Parenthood Federation) to meet the needs of information, education and service provision in the fields of sexuality and family planning. Since then, the SECS has continued to militate for reproductive rights and reproductive health in Romania.
Over the years, the SECS has been an educator, opinion maker, and pioneer in providing family planning services.
Through its mobilization programs the organization has succeeded in catalysing governmental organizations and nongovernmental organizations from 11 urban communities to create sustainable partnerships (Local Coordination Groups) who then, depending on the identified needs have developed and implemented their own local plans for educating disadvantaged population through the local community resources. SECS promotes through its programs the importance of local partnerships as being the key to identify the existing needs and the sustainable solutions for implementing them.
SECS
played a major role
in the National Family Planning Program and supported the creation of a coherent network of supporters of reproductive health in Romania.
Our organization holds the position of national leader in Family planning programs, being for 7 years a partner for Head of the Ministry of Health in initiation, implementation and monitoring of The National Family Planning Program in the health reform process. Through this program SECS has provided technical assistance for the Public Health Authorities of all the counties of the country and in collaboration with them has contributed to the medical continuum education process of 5300 family doctors and 4,000 medical schools nurses in rural areas. Believing that that the population's access to information and education must be one continuous process, the SECS initiated Community mobilization and training programs both in rural and urban areas, strategic and sustainable programs. So targeting changes in behavior in both general population as well for the service providers, the SECS was involved in the formation of 600 promoters or community leaders and 260 peer to peer educators from communities at risk. They act as agents of change and role models for their communities and are both representatives of young people and the adult population.
MAIN INSTITUTIONAL AREAS OF EXPERTISE
Providing technical assistance in initiation, implementation, monitoring and program evaluation, both at the national and international level, training of medical staff in family planning, financial management of medical offices.
Adult education (communication,fundraising, growing the level of awareness on some community issues, volunteering, advocacy, respect for sexual and reproductive rights for humans with special needs).
Training peer educators both for young people and for adults, community mobilization programs through developing multisectoral groups and optimal use of local resources.
Logistic system development and implementation for monitoring the distribution of some products within public health programs, communication campaigns who are targeting behavior change.
Advocacy programs.
Has developed expertise on the reproductive health of people with learning disabilities, benefiting from the models developed in countries such as Belgium, Germany, Ireland, Netherlands, Portugal and the United Kingdom.
Human resources come from different areas of training, team members.
Being accredited as project managers and trainers.
For more details about our activity and the context of reproductive health in Romania, you can read here.