IWD: How fertility foundation uses social media to promote gender equality

Saratu Kassim, founder of Fertility Support Group Africa – a non-governmental organisation supporting women and men with fertility challenges – has for the last few years used her foundation to create awareness and discourage gender disparities around fertility issues.

In her attempt to correct widely-held “erroneous” societal beliefs, Kassim adopted social media to disprove that fertility issues are solely associated with women.

Kassim said she was motivated by her own personal experience, which in 2017 fueled her desire to start the foundation.

“Basically, I went through infertility and when I had my first daughter, I decided to address the whole gap,” she said.

“I noticed people don’t talk about it because of the whole fear and stigma associated with infertility. I decided to build a platform where people can talk about it freely and get educated. We offer free treatment and testing opportunities for couples going through fertility issues.”

She started engaging people through a Whatsapp group before she created a Facebook platform, Fertility Support Group Africa, in 2018. In 2019, she created an Instagram forum, FSG Africa where she continued to create awareness about gender balance in fertility treatment.

Currently, she has been able to attract thousands of members on her WhatsApp platform, more than 2,000 followers on her Instagram page and over one million on Facebook.

“Many Nigerian health practitioners are usually overwhelmed and drained, they don’t usually have time to explain or properly educate patients about their conditions but with more innovations, days of gender disparities and discriminations are gradually fading away and fertility issues are beginning to achieve a balance among genders,” she added.

“Africans, particularly Nigerians believe a woman is a problem when couples start suffering infertility, this is one of the reasons why I started the fertility support group to bring men and women together to work towards finding a solution collectively.”

Kassim said the foundation also organises online outreaches to connect with both men and women contending with fertility issues.

“The foundation organises awareness and educational weeks, we invite women and men to our physical programmes and online programmes, and we invite guests, and health practitioners to educate couples going through infertility. We talk about nutrition and mental health for couples to bring men into the struggle,” she said.

“The online awareness we do has helped thousands of couples achieve pregnancy from across Africa. We give hope and educate couples on how to get proper information on seeking treatment because knowledge is power.”

Kassim said her platform has empowered women to achieve their dreams despite their challenges.