In a year of challenges, MSI is standing strong thanks to donor support.
Despite a rapidly changing global health landscape, generous donors in the United States and worldwide have stepped up to fill gaps, keep services going, and assure women and girls that we would be there for them no matter what.
Here, we share seven achievements that donor support made possible—and seven challenges that donors can help us overcome in the year ahead.
In 2024, donors helped MSI teams reach 14 million people with little or no prior access to reproductive healthcare, including 4.6 million vulnerable or displaced people in countries affected by climate disasters and humanitarian crises. With US donors by their side, MSI’s mobile outreach teams traveled 10 million kilometers to reach the most marginalized people and remote communities.
Donors enabled MSI to created CLIC+, an app for teams operating in challenging and remote locations to increase data visibility and improve client experience. Having the most accurate records of who we’re helping and how, means better data for decision-making to maximize your impact.
In 2024 alone, MSI and our partners achieved 11 major advocacy wins in policy, laws, and finance to help secure reproductive rights for women and girls around the world. For example, efforts by the MSI Kenya advocacy team will reduce the number of maternal deaths. We helped ensure Kenya’s post-abortion care package aligns with the World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines for healthcare provider training, clinical care, and more.
Donor support provides critical training to healthcare providers like Jennifer, a senior midwife in Ghana’s Health Service. The MSI training she received in abortion care and contraceptive services is helping her provide compassionate, comprehensive reproductive care, even in a setting where some staff previously stigmatized abortion. Jennifer is just one example of how you are strengthening health systems to provide sustainable, long-term access to essential healthcare.
Families thrive when mothers are protected from harmful pregnancy-related complications. In Papua New Guinea, for example, MSI nurse Norefa has been bringing contraception to remote communities for years. He has seen firsthand how preventing unintended pregnancies keeps families healthier and supports long-term well-being. “That’s what we are doing: creating healthy families,” Norefa says.
Post Roe v. Wade, abortion training opportunities are shrinking in the U.S. With help from US donors, MSI Mexico is stepping up to bridge that gap. At our clinics in Mexico, U.S. medical residents and students are building competence and confidence in abortion provision, an important skill for making choice possible and saving women’s lives.
From engaging men in Ethiopia and building climate-resilient health access, to leveraging community health workers for expanded contraceptive access in Sierra Leone, MSI is sharing our expertise to reach even more women and girls around the world. Through MSI’s “Evidence & Insights Compendium 2025,” we are spreading awareness of 17 programmatic innovations that can change health outcomes for women and girls globally. Donor support makes this knowledge sharing possible.
These USAID-purchased contraceptives have already been paid for by U.S. taxpayers. Despite international opposition, the administration is moving forward with this wasteful plan. If carried out, the destruction could trigger widespread shortages in countries where MSI works. Clinics may be forced to turn patients away, leading to more unintended pregnancies and unsafe abortions. Even the threat of this action sends a dangerous political message, emboldening anti-choice movements.
Many of MSI’s public sector partners were funded significantly by USAID. The loss of these funds has created critical gaps for programs providing contraception, youth healthcare, HIV prevention, and more. MSI is stepping forward to fill those gaps, and we need donor help to keep clinics open, keep contraceptive supply chains intact, and ensure access to critical services in marginalized communities.
In times of war and conflict, health systems can collapse just when they are needed most. Women and girls pay a heavy cost, including sexual and gender-based violence, which is tragically common in conflict. Displaced people are especially vulnerable. For example, civil war has claimed the lives of more than 1 million people in Northern Ethiopia, where over 5 million people have been forced to flee their homes and nearly 30% of young women have experienced sexual and gender-based violence.
Anti-choice organizations are flooding social media with false health claims, religious fearmongering, and AI-generated disinformation. Fearful of backlash, digital platforms like Facebook and Google have restricted advertising by women’s reproductive health organizations, including MSI — making it difficult to get accurate information to women who need it.
The United Nations Family Planning Agency (UNFPA) is the world’s largest public-sector buyer of contraceptives, negotiating bulk purchases at low cost and distributing to nonprofits like MSI. Now, a major part of this supply chain has been significantly defunded. Rising prices and shortages are likely, which will disproportionately impact lower-income countries where MSI works.
Women are responsible for tending crops and animals in many parts of the world, making them especially vulnerable to the effects of climate change, like droughts and flash floods. With their future uncertain, women want reproductive choice, but climate-related disasters can make it difficult for MSI teams to reach the most remote communities, where few other options for reproductive healthcare exist.
In countries where sexual and reproductive health work is criminalized, providers, counselors, and educators experience frequent harassment from anti-abortion activists. Protestors block access to centers, threaten workers and patients, and make fake appointments and phone calls that waste time and steal attention from women who need care. Anti-choice agitators around the world receive training and funding from the U.S. anti-abortion movement.
We don’t have to accept a world where women’s options are limited by anti-choice policies and crises outside their control. Together, we can make sure that the healthcare women need stays within reach.
We’ve overcome so much in 2025 because generous donors, committed to choice, took action. As we head into a new year, we know the challenges we face are great—but with hope and determination, we continue to give women the tools to control their bodies and futures.
