ABOUT US

The support you need for your reproductive health decisions.

More than four decades of excellence in sexual and reproductive health

Created in 1977, Oriéntame emerged as a private health initiative for social benefit, formulating a comprehensive model and a safe protocol that guarantees the care of women who require our services.

The care model establishes psychosocial guidance by qualified personnel as one of the key points to support women, adolescents and people with the possibility of gestating when making free and informed decisions about reproductive matters.

For nearly four decades, the Oriéntame Foundation has remained faithful to the principles of its founder, Dr. Jorge Villarreal Mejía: guaranteeing confidentiality, privacy and warmth in the care of unwanted pregnancies, their prevention and the promotion of reproductive health for Colombian women and couples, regardless of their economic capacity or social status.

Since 1990, the comprehensive care model for girls and women in sexual and reproductive health has been successfully transmitted to health professionals in ten Latin American countries, making Oriéntame a pioneer and leader in the region.

To improve care, over the years Oriéntame has developed a broad portfolio of easily accessible services, because when a person faces an unwanted pregnancy or an incomplete abortion, they require immediate and responsible medical and psychosocial care. Likewise, the Foundation has created alternative programs for unwanted pregnancies and training and education programs as a contribution to improving public health, sexual and reproductive rights, and social justice.

Since 2006, when the Constitutional Court with its ruling C-355 authorized the Voluntary Interruption of Pregnancy (IVE) in three specific cases, the Foundation has developed protocols with high quality standards, also consolidating itself as an international reference in the implementation of legal IVE services.

During 2020, at the beginning of the health crisis caused by the global COVID pandemic and for the first time in Colombia, Oriéntame provided virtual care for Voluntary Termination of Pregnancy. Online consultation made it possible providing safe care for women, girls and people with the ability to gestate without moving, safeguarding their health at a time when mobility and access to health care were severely restricted.

In 2022, Colombia becomes one of the countries with the greatest legal guarantees to exercise the right to decide in the face of an unwanted pregnancy on the continent, second only to Canada. For this advance, the Causa Justa movement filed a lawsuit for the elimination of abortion from the Penal Code, in which Oriéntame took an active part from the beginning of the initiative, and which ended in the legalization of abortion without restrictions for the first 24 weeks of pregnancy.

At the end of that same year, two members of the Causa Justa movement were recognized by TIME magazine as among the 100 most influential people in the world for their contribution to the advancement of reproductive autonomy: Ana Cristina González Vélez and Cristina Villarreal Velásquez, the latter director of Oriéntame from 1995 to 2019.

Rights and health as a framework to enhance the dignity of people

We are a social benefit organization dedicated to enabling the exercise of sexual and reproductive rights through access to comprehensive, safe and high-quality human health services.

Regional leadership in reproductive health and rights

We work to be leaders in Latin America in the promotion of sexual and reproductive rights and health, generating social benefits and high-impact results for our main interest groups.