International Conference on Family Planning (ICFP) 2022

VSO are proud sponsors of ICFP 2022. ICFP provides a global stage for countries, organisations, and individuals to make important commitments and celebrate achievements at the world’s largest scientific conference on family planning and sexual and reproductive health rights (SRHR).

The ICFP 2022 is more than a conference, it's a movement towards universal access to family planning and health care. It's a community of advocates - political leaders, scientists, researchers, policy makers, faith and youth leaders - exchanging ideas and working together to innovate family planning programming and research, towards achieving universal health coverage.

But what is meant by 'universal health coverage'? Quite simply, this means all people have access to health services, when and where they need them, without risk of financial hardship. The UN Sustainable Development Goals pledges for this to be achieved globally by 2030, but this will not be achieved without the collaboration and innovation of different stakeholders.

VSO's new global health strategy aims that all adolescents and youth, achieve the right to quality health and well-being by 2024, with a focus on Adolescents and Youth Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (AYSRHR) and Maternal Newborn Child Health (MNCH). 

VSO's presence at ICFP means we can build strategic partnerships to better help marginalised people gain access to health care, position and lobby key decision makers and presents our robust evidence for using the volunteering for development method to improve global health.

Brown won an EXCELL award for her contributions to family planning

ICFP ended on a very high note with our youth volunteer and ambassador, Brown, receiving the EXCELL award that recognizes her leadership in Family Planning based on her great contribution to the Imbere Heza project in Rwanda. What a proud moment for Brown and VSO!

The Excellence in Leadership for Family Planning (EXCELL) Award recognises extraordinary individuals, organizations and countries who have made significant contributions to the family planning field, and whose work deserves to be highlighted and used to inspire meaningful dialogue within the community.

This is a strong reaffirmation of VSO’s strong leadership in the sector in not only disability inclusion, social accountability, resilience and youth engagement/leadership but also our primary actor centred core value has definitely wowed more than one.

Hear from our volunteers working in health

The #BeTheChange interactive exhibition encouraged discussions on the transformative change we can jointly realise in universal health coverage, leaving no one behind. Our youth volunteers were very much at the forefront of our presentation throughout the conference. In the below clips and stories, our youth health champions share their volunteering journey.