Children in a rural school where APROFE works
Emily Goldberg, MSW Candidate
Emily worked in Ecuador at Asociación Pro Bienestar de la Familia Ecuatoriana (APROFE)’s main center in Guayaquil, a western city of 2,000,000 people. She participated in two areas of the organization: the Adolescent Program and the Rural Service Program.
I spent the summer working with APROFE, a family planning organization founded in Ecuador in 1965. Today, APROFE maintains 20 clinics in cities throughout Ecuador, a rural service program, and extensive adult and youth education programs. I worked primarily with the Adolescent Program, traveling to schools to give presentations to students on the services offered by APROFE, in order to increase awareness of the organization’s teen clinic and youths’ reproductive health rights. I also helped run after-school activities for youth outreach workers at APROFE’s main center.
My internship with APROFE provided me the valuable experience of working with youth on family planning issues in a different cultural and linguistic context. In addition, due to APROFE’s push toward self-sufficiency, I learned about the challenges for nonprofit organizations of maintaining self-sufficiency while fulfilling mission and staying true to organizational values and beliefs.
Read Emily’s report here (doc)