Charity marks 25 years working with women in Africa

A Somerset charity which promotes healthcare for women in Africa is celebrating 25 years of work.

Chase Africa is based on a farm near Frome, but works in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda bringing birth control and healthcare to women in rural communities.

Robin Witt founded Chase Africa after visiting his wife’s family in Kenya and seeing that the local forest was disappearing.

Mr Witt said: “Environmental health and human health are very interconnected. With climate change having such a significant impact on their lives, we believe our work is crucial to giving people a much better future. »

After founding the association in 2000, they became involved in community tree planting projects in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.

“I realized that this unmet need for family planning was keeping people poor and impacting the environment, because these local people were really depending on the local forest for their cooking wood and it was slowly disappearing,” Mr Witt said.

The charity focused on educating men and women in these countries about birth control and health care.

“In the beginning there were a lot of myths and misconceptions, especially from men. But times are changing. People can no longer continue to divide their land between big families,” Mr Witt said.

“All we want is to give women the opportunity to choose how many children they want to have.”

Harriet Gordon-Brown, CEO of the charity, said there had been a change for women in Kenya in recent years.

“It doesn’t take much to persuade women that they want to time the spacing between pregnancies,” she said.

“When it comes to changing cultural norms, it will only be done through discussion.”

She added that while being a small charity can be a good thing as it makes it “nimble”, it also now faces funding challenges.

“There have been huge cuts in international aid,” Ms Gordon-Brown said.

“There has been limited funding available and that has implications.”

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