What stands out most to me is seeing many young women confidently choose and use long-term family planning methods, like the five-year and twelve-year options, based entirely on their own informed decisions. To me, that represents real, lasting change.
When this work began, health extension workers trained us to identify and register married young women aged 15 to 19 in our villages and bring them, together with their husbands, to counseling sessions. Through this work, I learned that people’s lives can change significantly through simple education and support, and that communities are genuinely willing to accept positive changes when given even modest guidance.
I applied what I learned in my own family first, encouraging my son’s wife to use family planning, before teaching others in the community to do the same. Many participants have since started saving, building houses, raising livestock, and using family planning themselves, sharing their own experiences with others. Seeing that ripple effect, starting with one household and spreading through the community, is what I am most proud of.
Ten years, nine voices, one thread running through all of them: Change did not arrive because a program told people what to do. It arrived because someone listened first and then stayed long enough to watch a house get built, a marriage get called off, a business take root. That is the case for Smart Start, and it will be the case for the next 10 years.
Birhanesh,
Community Mobilizers, Women’s Development Army
