About IMIFAP

At IMIFAP, we believe that fighting poverty requires expanding a person’s freedoms and capabilities. Development of personal skills allow people to seize new opportunities while eliminating psychological or social barriers. By teaching individuals how to express their opinions, think independently, and make informed decisions, our programs facilitate personal advancement and help create successful schools, law-abiding communities, cost-effective health services, and growing democracies.

To help people take steps toward personal development, IMIFAP developed the Framework for Enabling Empowerment (FrEE) (Pick and Sirkin, in press, Oxford University Press) to guide the creation of our programs. FrEE stresses four objectives: 

     •  Reducing psychosocial barriers such as shame, guilt, and fear to 
        encourage independence through life-skills development;

     •  Teaching individuals that behavior changes are possible and under 
        their control; 

     •  Strengthening behavior changes by training local teachers and
        community promoters, appealing to public officials, and providing
        information to the public in both national and indigenous languages; 

     •  Conducting programs that are interactive and supported by dynamic 
        materials.

Our programs cover a wide range of topics while maintaining an underlying focus on life skills, gender, and social participation:

• HIV/AIDS prevention • drug and alcohol abuse • sexual and reproductive health • nutrition • hygiene • diabetes • cervical and breast cancer prevention • school performance • parenting • participatory citizenship • microenterprise development.