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Rahnuma started serving poor and marginalized people of Pakistan as the
Family Planning Association of Pakistan (FPAP) way back in 1953, as one
of the pioneers in providing family planning services and advocating for
the small family norm. The government later embraced the cause by establishing
the Ministry of Population Welfare in 196-. In about a decade, Rahnuma
-FPAP had grown up from one-room operation at Karachi, Lahore and Dhaka
to an infrastructure of district branches with model clinics and information
centers extending the message to men and women. It expanded its work through
community based infrastructure by establishing the family welfare centers
in peri-urban and rural areas. Now the organization has the biggest infrastructure
by an NGO in Pakistan, which consists of the Family Welfare Centers, Family
Health Hospitals, Focus Area Programs and a wide network of referrals
from the private practitioners. Rahnuma - FPAP has also pioneered in the
concepts of social marketing of contraceptives, family welfare centers
and reproductive health services.
Rahnuma has been working on various innovative programs to increased access
of people to quality and affordable health services, advocate for a right-based
agenda, empowering the communities, especially the women and young girls,
and strengthen the civil society in Pakistan. To meet these ends, the
organization widened its scope to cover sexual and reproductive health
of the whole family as an offshoot of organizational concern for the total
well being of women, children, families and communities, after the 1994’s
International Conference on Population and Development, in Cairo. Rahnuma
is also working on its poverty alleviation program, as the health and
wellbeing of people is directly linked with the socio-economic conditions.
As the organization has celebrated over fifty years of momentous achievements
and encouraging history, its name did not reflect the scope of its work.
So FPAP renamed itself to ‘Rahnuma’, which means a guide for
development and prosperity. The change in name and logo was an outcome
of a management review, in which a comprehensive analysis of management
and human resource was done to enhance the organizational capacity for
meeting its development agenda and serving the communities in a better
way. Currently, Rahnuma is working on its strategic framework of 5 A’s
that include: Adolescents and catering to their needs; combating HIV/AIDS;
minimizing the risk of unsafe Abortions; increasing Access to services,
particularly for the poor and the marginalized; and Advocacy for the Rights.
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