There are many ways you can get involved and help women and girls with obstetric fistula. If you are interested in helping in any of the ways listed below, contact us and let us know!

1. Fundraising

Start a Giving Circle
Inspiring people to get involved through giving circles is a great first step toward involvement in the cause. We have wonderful resources to help you in your giving circle leadership role. Click here to learn how we can help you.

Join One By One: America
Do you know anyone who lives in Vermont, Mississippi, Colorado or beyond? One By One has issued a challenge to each of the 50 United States to raise $300, in total raising enough money to help 50 women get the care that they need. Click here to learn more about One By One: America.

Participate in Corporate Matching
Maximize the impact of your gift through corporate gift matching. To determine if your company participates in corporate match, contact your company’s personnel or human resource office.

2. In-Kind Donations

One By One is growing faster than we could have ever imagined. We are seeing wonderful opportunities that can be leveraged into more funding to help women with obstetric fistula. However growth does bring some needs. We have a short wish-list below and if you have ideas, connections or would like to help us directly with any of the below, please email us at info@fightfistula.org.

Donate Frequent Flyer Miles
We need a bank of miles that we can use to go to speaking engagements, conferences and other events where our presence will make a big difference in the effort to raise awareness about fistula. Please help us by donating your airline miles.

Contact the Media
We are working hard to spread the word about our work through the media. If anyone has connections to media that they would like to share, please email us at info@fightfistula.org.

Back to top

3. Raising Awareness

Tell Us Your Story
Please write in and tell us about your giving circle experience. If you host a giving circle event, please take pictures and send them to us so we can post them in our developing section that highlights giving circle leaders and their events.

For inspiration, see giving circle leader Ellie Hagey’s article in the online magazine, Global Girl Network.

Write Letters to the Editor
The work to end obstetric fistula can be helped through raising awareness. We hope you will take the time to write your thoughts as letters to the editor or as opinion pieces to your local newspaper and/or your favorite magazine or large newspaper. Writing to magazines that focus on women’s issues and journals and magazines that are about social change, international issues, health, and women and children are wonderful outlets. However, feel free to write to any media outlet that you think would take an interest in the story. We also encourage you to write to online publications.

The following web page is a concise set of tips on writing an op-ed piece.
http://www.accessiblesociety.org/mediamatters/mm17.html

Write to your Legislators and Other Influential People
We encourage you to write letters to your local and federal legislators and anyone else locally, regionally, nationally or internationally who you think could influence the issue of funding for obstetric fistula. This is important because often there are amendments and bills being proposed and voted on that could help or hinder the issue. Please go to our news page to read about some current proposals and passed amendments that could make a real difference.

Click here to see a sample letter to your legislator. You can find your legislator by visiting www.house.gov.

On an ad-hoc basis, we will organize letter-writing campaigns to help members of Congress know where individual citizens stand on this issue. If you are interested in helping with letter-writing campaigns, please email us at info@fightfistula.org.

Alert Local Newsletters and Community or Faith-Based Newspapers
Newsletters published by community groups such as faith-based groups, community centers, and neighborhood newspapers are great forums for articles about local giving circle initiatives, awareness about fistula and how your community can help. Please consider writing a letter or article in your local newsletter.

Back to top