The lives of seven million infants and half a million women could be saved each year through projects promoting safe motherhood, according to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). That’s where the Rotarian Action Group for Population Growth and Sustainable Development – Rotary’s largest action group – steps in.

In its work tackling population issues, the group helps coordinate programs to educate women about reproductive health and child spacing, to improve maternal health, and to prevent mother-to-child transmission of AIDS, as well as to help empower women through literacy, vocational, and microcredit projects.

Maternal well-being is inextricably linked with child health, RI President Dong Kurn Lee’s emphasis this year, say members of the group. “He who takes care of the mother takes care of the child,” says Robert Zinser, past district governor of District 1860 (Germany) and current vice chair of the action group. Zinser notes that when women die in childbirth, the lives of all the children in the family are put at risk. According to the UNFPA, children who have lost their mothers are up to 10 times more likely to die prematurely than those who haven’t.

The action group got its start at a Rotary-sponsored peace program in Senegal in 1995, where attendees talked about how to address population issues. The next year, interested Rotarians formed an international fellowship, and in 1999, the RI Board approved a statement encouraging Rotary clubs to take on projects that would impact population growth. In 2005 the group became a Rotarian Action Group.

The group now has 25,000 members and has helped implement about 150 projects worldwide, including several major projects addressing maternal and child health in Nigeria.

“We are all working hand in hand to do something in the world,” says Salem Mashhour, past district governor of District 2450 (Armenia, Bahrain, Cyprus, Egypt, Georgia, Jordan, Lebanon, Sudan, and United Arab Emirates) and the action group’s chair.

The action group works with Rotary clubs in developing countries to find other clubs to act as sponsors. It also facilitates grant applications to The Rotary Foundation as well as other organizations. Rotarians in the action group provide their expertise, providing a resource for clubs taking on the complex issue of maternal mortality.

The action group has held workshops at RI conventions and created partnerships with nongovernmental organizations such as The Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health. Mashhour, who is from Cairo, is helping the action group organize a presidential membership conference in Egypt in February with a specific emphasis on reducing child mortality.

For more information about the Rotarian Action Group on Population Control and Sustainable Development, visit www.rifpd.org.