A Voice For the Voiceless

MISSION

The Advocacy Project seeks to help community-based advocates produce, disseminate and use information, and so become more effective advocates for human rights and social justice

Libby Abbott and the Uterine Prolapse Alliance (UPA)

Libby Abbott will be working with two partner organizations – the Center for Agro-Ecology and Development (CAED) and the Women's Reproductive Rights Program (WRRP) — on the issue of uterine prolapse as a 2008 Peace Fellow in Nepal.  


Libby comes to this fellowship with a background in public health and reproductive rights fieldwork in South Asia, and is thrilled to extend this experience to her upcoming work to promote the new Uterine Prolapse Alliance (UPA) based in Kathmandu, Nepal.




Brushing Up on the Issues

Libby is currently an intern with The Advocacy Project, liaising with UPA and AP to implement the forthcoming national and international campaigns for the prevention and treatment of the condition. 

By the end of her spring term Libby hopes to be a walking reference on the issue of uterine prolapse and know the campaign inside and out, so that she can carry this information and experience with her into the fellowship in Nepal.

How it All Began

Libby's initial experience in South Asian development came when she lived and studied in North India for eight months as a college junior. In addition to interning with a local NGO in Varanasi and working on reproductive health programs for girls living in slums, Libby also designed and conducted her own field research in a nearby rural district.

Through her research she investigated the intersection of reproductive rights, community-based service delivery models, women's empowerment, and caste in an NGO family planning program. This research became part of Libby's honors thesis ("In her hands: A case study of re-interpretation in the community-based distribution model in Uttar Pradesh, India") for completion of a BA in international development studies at Brown University. 

After graduating, Libby continued her work in public health in India as a research assistant in Chennai, South India, where she led a pilot study investigating community-based possibilities for tuberculosis treatment.

Dedicated to Returning to Nepal

Libby first had the opportunity to visit Nepal while she was living in Varanasi, and instantly fell in love with the place. She found that Nepal offered much of the same sensory and intellectual stimulation as India, with some additional layers: the mountain setting of the Kathmandu Valley had an undeniable appeal and the contemporary socio-political environment of the country made Nepal a more unique and challenging context for development.

Before leaving Kathmandu on that first fateful trip to Nepal, Libby wrote postcards to practically everyone she knew, declaring "I will live and work here some day!" She has been on a quest to make that happen ever since.

With the 2008 AP Peace Fellowship, Libby will not only be living in Nepal, but she will be working on an issue to which she has become deeply devoted. Libby knew pretty much nothing about uterine prolapse before she began researching it for AP.

Now, as she learns more about the gruesome and stigmatized condition that is so rarely spoken about (but which affects between 10 and 30 percent of rural Nepali women), she is convinced that this is the perfect way for her to participate in and contribute to Nepali development. Health is, after all, not just a fundamental human right, but good health is also a cornerstone of community-based development. It is her hope that through the Uterine Prolapse Alliance, healthy women and safe motherhood can ensure the future of sustainable growth and participatory development in Nepal.

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