LOS ANGELES, California — Actress and singer Mandy Moore has been both an entertainer and philanthropist. She began as a global ambassador for Population Services International (PSI) in 2009 and has worked extensively with them ever since. In Mandy Moore’s partnership with PSI, she has shown that she fervently cares about people’s right to live a healthy life. She believes that people, especially children, should have access to resources that provide them a fair chance of obtaining or maintaining good health.
PSI is a global non-profit organization that works in more than 50 countries and advocates for programs that target malaria, child-survival, reproductive health, HIV, family planning, sanitation and non-communicable diseases. Through its efforts in family planning 2018 alone, PSI reduced the number of unwanted pregnancies by 6.42million and prevented the fatality of 17,300 mothers. That same year, it prevented 240,100 people from developing HIV infections and protected 95,800 children from diseases like diarrhea, malaria and pneumonia. As of 2018, the organization has brought in $542,349,734 in total revenue.
Moore in Southern Sudan
In 2009, when Mandy Moore’s partnership with PSI kicked off, she joined them on a trip to Southern Sudan to launch a malaria prevention campaign. Malaria is a mosquito-borne disease that is preventable and treatable. However, it contributes to the majority of deaths among young children throughout sub-Saharan Africa. In Southern Sudan, malaria is the leading cause of death.
The rate of malaria deaths in Africa has decreased significantly due to the distribution of insecticide-treated mosquito bed nets, which have been proven to decrease the mortality rates by around 20 percent in young children. As a PSI global ambassador, Moore assisted in launching the distribution of more than 3 million insecticide-treated nets to children and families affected by malaria throughout Southern Sudan. In 2011, Moore was honored as a Champion in the Fight Against Malaria by the U.N. Foundation’s Nothing But Nets campaign in celebration of World Malaria Day.
Moore in Tanzania
In 2014, Moore went to Tanzania with PSI where the mission was to follow and evaluate health workers on the ground to witness how they service the Tanzanian communities. In particular, the organization wanted to know how specific health workers provide family planning for women. In developing countries, at least 220 million families have no family planning education. This lack of knowledge leads to an annual rate of around 74 million unwanted pregnancies. Complications from pregnancy and childbirth kill around 800 women daily.
In Moore’s time following the daily routine of health workers in Tanzania, she saw firsthand how they speak with the women in Tanzania about contraceptive options and give the women vouchers to go to PSI-supported clinics where they could talk to medical professionals about planning for a family. It has been proven that maternal deaths can be reduced about by around 25 percent by investing in contraception.
Moore in Bihar
Moore’s partnership with PSI as global ambassador led her to travel to Bihar, India where she met with women who had taken out a loan together in order to build a toilet for their community. Building toilets and implementing a sanitation system in Bihar was necessary because more than 450,000 Indian children died in 2016 from diarrheal diseases caused by poor sanitation. The lack of sanitation has also caused general sickness. Furthermore, girls have a greater chance of being a victim of rape, verbal harassment, shame and violence when having to use the bathroom outdoors.
The social enterprise program that PSI developed funded and built of more than 16,000 toilets. The program provides the people in India the possibility to have permanent toilets in their homes by purchasing a toilet from a single vendor rather than follow the more complex process of contracting the building of a toilet, which can take up to six months.
Through her endeavors as global ambassador for PSI, Moore has encountered people of many backgrounds. In the various settings in which she has immersed herself, Moore has shown that the evolution of people’s health and quality of life is important to her. Through Mandy Moore’s partnership with PSI, she has proven that she cares about the health and wellbeing of people around the world.
– Cydni Payton
Photo: Flickr