The BALANCED initiative in Tanzania’s Saadani National Park, “the only terrestrial park in the country with a contiguous marine area,” released the results of a 2012 progress survey on its efforts to create community champions for sustainable natural resource management and family planning awareness. Compared to the last survey in 2009, they found increased family planning awareness, higher contraceptive distribution and usage, and improved discussion and acceptance of contraceptive use from male partners. BALANCED-trained community-based distributors provided contraception to “31 percent of all pill users and 21 percent of all condom users.” Survey results also show a greater community awareness of the impact of individual and collective actions on the surrounding biosphere. The report calls for the continued training of community-based distributors and PHE “champions,” along with outreach to the private sector in order to ensure training and distribution can continue without the permanent presence of the BALANCED Project.

Since 2010, the BALANCED Philippines project, based in Bohol’s Danajon bank marine bioregion and the Verde Island Passage, has achieved positive gains in expanding access to family planning and awareness of coastal resource management efforts aimed at fishing communities, particularly among youth demographics. According to BALANCED’s final report, the program had some difficulty gaining substantial improvement in the 20 municipalities where PATH Foundation Philippines, Inc., had existing PHE projects, but saw greater improvement in communities new to PHE. Further, assessments of community attitudes indicate a greater acceptance of community-based family planning initiatives introduced by BALANCED-trained distributors. The authors recommend focusing on convincing influential community elders of the importance of family planning to help further promote public awareness and acceptance. While the BALANCED Project has concluded, PATH Foundation Philippines, which has a long history of doing PHE, may continue to work these areas.