The PASFASS project to increase the social empowerment of Chadian women

March 2019 - December 2023

There are numerous challenges in Chad in terms of maternal, reproductive, neonatal, child and adolescent health, family planning and gender-based violence. To meet these challenges, CARE, the Bureau d’Appui Santé et Environnment (BASE) and Groupe URD have developed the PASFASS project which targeted the provinces of Mandoul and Logone Oriental over 3 years, with support from the French Development Agency.

Funded by

Agence Française de Développement

Presentation of the PASFASS project

There are numerous challenges in Chad in terms of maternal, reproductive, neonatal, child and adolescent health, family planning and gender-based violence. Despite the slight improvements made by Chad in terms of health coverage and services, health indicators remain low. Maternal and infant mortality rates are the highest in the sub-region at 860 per 100,000 live births for maternal mortality, and 72 per 1000 live births for infant mortality. What is more, young people and adolescents, who are very affected by these issues, rarely use primary healthcare structures.

To tackle these problems, CARE, the Bureau d’Appui Santé et Environnement (BASE) and Groupe URD have developed the PASFASS project (Project to socially empower Chadian women via access to health services and addressing gender-based violence). The aim of this project was to socially empower Chadian women by improving their access to maternal, reproductive, neonatal, child and adolescent primary healthcare, and addressing gender-based violence. On the one hand, this involved increasing the number of people using health services, with a particular focus on a community-based approach, and on the other, improving the quality of the services, and backing up the overall project with a research mechanism.

The specific objectives of the project were as follows:

Promoting demand for reproductive, maternal, neonatal, child and adolescent health services and family planning services;
Raising awareness about gender-based violence through improved family practices and a community-based approach;
Improving women’s and girls’ living conditions by giving them access to quality care, improving prevention, and improving the way that cases of gender-based violence are dealt with;
Improving knowledge about the barriers and factors that determine access to and use of reproductive, maternal, neonatal, child and adolescent healthcare, and gender-based violence healthcare.

This project has been funded by the French Development Agency. It primarily targeted the provinces of Mandoul and Logone Oriental.

Groupe URD, a learning partner in the consortium

Within this partnership, Groupe URD has been responsible for learning support and strategic programme management, using the tools that it has developed to facilitate agility and ensure that operations remain relevant.

Groupe URD provided targeted support (studies, evaluations and monitoring) which aimed to give project stakeholders, and primarily field staff, practitioners and the health authorities a better understanding of the socio-economic factors that have an impact on access to Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Healthcare.

A training course helped the consortium members to improve the effectiveness of their monitoring and evaluation procedures, and a session on cartography and geographic information systems helped the project teams to draw up their own health maps.

Groupe URD carried out a studies on security management, on access to reproductive healthcare among adolescents in Chad, and on the social norms and practices related to female genital mutilation (FGM) in the Mandoul region.

A medium-length documentary on the continued practice of FGM was produced towards the end of the project, and a final lesson sharing exercise was conducted via the production of case studies and technical files.