SIMON VAUGHAN
Director
Simon Vaughan has worked in international development for the past decade. He is also a theatre maker.
With ten years of experience, Simon is a fundraising professional who has worked across a broad swathe of fundraising areas, raising millions for the organisations he has worked for. He currently works in the philanthropy team for Oxfam Australia.
Simon believes that the inequality and poverty that sees women in Sierra Leone unable to give birth safely is an injustice and that when we support organisations like AMF we are not simply giving to charity, but rather we are fighting injustice.
He holds a Master of Development Studies – International Development from the University of New South Wales and a Bachelor of Creatives Arts – Performance from the University of Wollongong.
In his theatre life, Simon makes and performs work with the performance collective Applespiel which he co-founded. Together they have created and performed works for, among others, Sydney Festival, Festival of Dangerous Ideas, Malthouse Theatre, Arts House, Performance Space and Next Wave Festival.
![Let us virtually travel to Aberdeen Women's Centre during our 2019 visit - our CEO @aminata_conteh_biger with the Dream Team as pictured above
Here in Sydney as we find ourselves in an extended lockdown due to COVID-19, we can appreciate the access that Australians have to quality healthcare, warmth and shelter provided in our humble abodes (and the ability to stay connected via Zoom calls during periods of reduced face-to-face contact!).
In celebrating the 2021 United Nations World Population Day today, at the Aminata Maternal Foundation we are reflecting on how the rest of the world is managing with compromised health care systems. The area of sexual and reproductive health in particular is impacted as many countries are experiencing concern over changing fertility rates. United Nations Population Fund (formerly the United Nations Fund for Population Activities [UNFPA]), emphasises that educational, economic and political empowerment of women enables autonomy and control over choices regarding their body.
Did you know, only 55% of women have the power to make their own decisions about their bodies? The current pandemic has exacerbated gender-based inequities, notably in Sierra Leone as the teenage pregnancy rate continues to rise. During the Ebola crisis, teenage pregnancies in Sierra Leone saw a 66% increase and it is anticipated that another surge will result from the COVID-19 crisis. To combat this our Dream Team project collaborates with the Aberdeen Women's Centre located in Freetown, Sierra Leone to provide support to re-integrate teenage mothers into their communities post-birth.
References for further reading🌏:
https://www.un.org/en/observances/world-population-day
https://aminatamaternalfoundation.org/mission/our-projects/the-dream-team/](https://aminatamaternalfoundation.org/wp-content/plugins/instagram-feed-pro/img/placeholder.png)
