Family Planning Voices

Family Planning Voices (FP Voices) serves as an oral history of the global family planning movement. Launched in 2015, the storytelling initiative has documented and shared the stories from around the world of those working to improve access to family planning and serves as a database of family planning wisdom and real-world experience.

The true power of the project is that this growing collection of stories is told in participants’ own words. This very personal touch helps build global momentum around the family planning movement and a stronger sense of community, connecting voices across the globe, from small rural villages to the largest modern cities.

Since its launch, FP Voices has:

• Interviewed and photographed 600 people in more than 60 countries, publishing 1,000 stories on the website and social media.
• Led storytelling workshops in the United States, Indonesia, Uganda, South Africa, the Philippines, Madagascar and Ethiopia to help family planning projects, organizations and networks tell their own stories.

Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health conducted an impact assessment of FP Voices and found that stories and storytelling have a lot of power to impact knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors. Specifically related to knowledge application and collaboration as a result of stories and storytelling, the assessment found:

• 85% of survey respondents agreed that it provided them with a new idea or way of thinking
• 68% of survey respondents agreed that it led them to focus on a new family planning topic
• 65% of survey respondents agreed that it encouraged them to start a new family planning activity
• 74% of survey respondents agreed that it prompted them to collaborate with family planning professionals outside of their organization

At the end of September 2020, the five-year FP Voices journey concluded but the FP Voices website will continue to be available for inspiration, reflection and knowledge sharing for the family planning community. While this chapter of storytelling has come to a close, storytelling remains an important method of sharing experiential knowledge. Learn tips and tools, gained from the experiences of the FP Voices team, for collecting stories of your own.