This is an area we know something about, and we feel we can have an impact. According to the Population Council, only 51 percent of all the fertile couples in the world have access to family planning. So even if they wanted to use family planning of some sort, a lot of people couldn't get it. And while educating women tends to reduce the birth rate, and overall economic development also helps, we've chosen to focus on trying to convince people directly to have smaller families. We're not shy about stepping up to the plate and talking about the importance of family planning.
Some organizations are.
A. One interesting program we've funded produces very popular motivational soap operas on radio and television in Mexico and Tanzania. These are regular soap operas, but they also contain messages about family planning, family size, and, in Tanzania, information about AIDS as well. I'd like to mention is one we've funded through Population Services International, which uses an approach called social marketing. It sets up marketing systems in countries so that every tobacco store and corner grocery is selling condoms. We funded this in Bangladesh, and someone went out to all the little stores throughout the country and got them started selling condoms.