Welcome to the United Nations
WOOMB International projects offer innovative policies and programmes for families, indigenous communities and youth. A recent project in Timore Leste addressed five Sustainable Development Goals as follows:Goal # 3 Good health and well-being; Goal #4 Quality education; Goal #5 Gender equality; Goal # 11 Sustainable communities; Goal #17 Partnerships.
WOOMB International Ltd has affiliates in forty countries around the world. All these affiliates offer education in the Billings Ovulation Method® of natural fertility regulation which enables women to plan their pregnancies or avoid pregnancy, without drugs or devices.This method is inexpensive and has proven to be more than 99% effective in avoiding pregnancy and 78% effective in achieving pregnancy in women who have previously had difficulty conceiving.
Knowledge of their bodies and their fertility empowers young women to avoid teenage pregnancy, complete their education and seek meaningful employment. Women living in poverty are able to avoid pregnancy without expensive, harmful contraception. Indigenous women are offered education programs in their own communities and in their own language.
Women living in societies where respect depends on their ability to have children can successfully achieve pregnancy, and even improve their chances of having a child of a particular gender, by timing intercourse using the Billings Ovulation Method® to improve these outcomes.
Success Story
An example of the success of our programs is in Timore Leste where women live in poverty with limited access to education and health care, often having to travel for days across rough terrain to seek assistance. With the help of WOOMB International Ltd our local affiliate was able to build a simple office where they conduct education programs for women. They also acquired a vehicle so that instructors can travel to rural areas to reach women who cannot get to the office.
Maria’s Story
Maria came to the office soon after it was opened.She had made the three day trek from the mountains on foot, sleeping beside the track each night. She was desperate to get help for the sake of her family and her health. Maria is the mother of seven young children. She had been visited in the village two years previously by a passing health worker who convinced her to have an IUD inserted.The health worker left and the bleeding started. Previously Maria had been poor but she had been able to work in the fields and care for her children.Now she was weak and always tired.
When she arrived at our office in Dili she was welcomed and looked after by our caring staff. She was given instruction in the Billings Ovulation Method® and an appointment was made for her to have the IUD removed at a local medical clinic. After a couple of days of rest she felt strong enough to make the return journey to her village. When visited at home by her Billings Ovulation Method® teacher a month later she was managing well.The bleeding had stopped and she was charting accurately. Over the next six months the teacher remained in contact with Maria and was delighted to report that she continued to use the Method successfully to avoid pregnancy, had returned to work and was able to look after her family.She and her husband have been glowing in their praise of the help given to them and she is now helping other women in the village, with the support of her teacher, to understand their fertility and plan their families naturally without drugs or devices.
In another case, a woman called Amivi, whose husband was told by his family that he must leave her if she could not give him children, was able to achieve a pregnancy successfully with knowledge of when she was ovulating according to the Billings Ovulation Method®.
Several women who have been able to apply the Method successfully themselves, have then sought training as instructors and taken this information back to their own communities to help other women. In this way communities benefit, partnerships to empower women are forged and the word spreads.
Lessons Learned
This project has reinforced what we already know – that if knowledge of their fertility is delivered to women in their own communities, by other women who speak the same language, positive outcomes result for women, girls and their families. WOOMB International will continue to deliver health education projects to communities throughout the world, especially those communities where poverty, injustice and gender inequality exist.
For more information about the Billings Ovulation Method® see www.billings.life
For more information about WOOMB International Ltd see www.woombinternational.org
Attached are pictures of the newly constructed office in Timore Leste and of an instruction program taking place in the office.