Meaningful Volunteer is a volunteer placement organization currently operating in Uganda and Philippines. They place volunteers. They also teach the Standard Days Method of NFP as part of Project Lifecycle, their effort to provide family planning options in accord with the religious and ethical needs of the countries they serve. Yay, you’re thinking.

Well, except for the fact that they don’t really know that much about NPF, and evidently resent it.

They posted on the their Facebook & Twitter account Tuesday at link to an article about the Church in the Philippines, who’s been in a long, long fight against secularist pressures to mainline contraceptive methods into their country,

“Why Project Lifecycle is forced to used natural family planning methods and not modern methods like the pill and condoms.”

Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t NFP a modern method? (We can have a discussion about the downfalls of SDM another time. Additionally, SDM is not the only method available in the Philippines.) Also, according to MV’s description of Project Lifecycle, this program was established to respect the regional religious and ethical preferences where they serve. Yet, this type of attitude flies in the face of the respect they supposedly trying to show.

So, if you could, please stop by MV’s Facebook page and/ or reply to their recent Tweet on this topic, letting them know that 1) NFP is a modern method and it’s amazing (your own words–whatever), and 2) Respect the countries they serve; Nobody’s forcing them to do anything–if they don’t want to teach SDM, let Project Lifecycle go. In order to comment on their FB page, you have to become a fan of MV (you can undo this later if you want), and if you want to reply to a Tweet, I believe you need to follow first. Small price to let them know.

Update: Here’s Meaningful Volunteer’s reply to me on Facebook (Please do jump in on FB if you disagree with this!):

oops. I stand corrected. SDM is obviously a modern method.

I would disagree that _natural family planing_ is a modern method though. People have been avoiding having babies by natural means ever since humankind got the whole “sperm + egg = babies” concept.

I would also wholeheartedly disagree with the link on njnfp.org that states natural family planning methods are 99% effective.

Why is it that people take about 10 seconds to look at something–not being as scientific as they claim they are–then decide that NFP is still what they incorrectly judge it to be? What really gets me is that they think SDM is more effective than NFP (Ovulation and Sympto-thermal).