Black Midwifery Fellowship
With the understanding that Black women and their infants have the worst outcomes of any other group in the US and globally. It is imperative that we begin to sit at the feet of those who are optimizing these numbers and gather tools that center our vitality. For 25 years, the community that we will be immersed and in communion with, lived through unimaginable atrocities in a civil war.
As Black people in the diaspora, we are still very much so feeling the historical implications of what our ancestors endured, while dealing with the current manifestations. Imagine experiencing it first hand as our sister midwives in Northern Uganda have.
YET, in the 17 years that Mother Health International (MHI) has been in collaboration with this community, they have co-created a methodology for midwifery care that folds in traditional/indigenous healing and care that deeply centers the needs and experiences of the community. As such, have never lost a Mom. They have served close to 20,000 mothers and babies. The infant Mortality rate in the region is 44/1,000 while at MHI its 11/1,000.Led by traditional midwives Sumayyah Franklin and Nikiya Ellis-Chavis, both of whom have spent time at the birth center in Uganda, and in deep partnership with our Ugandan midwives, this trip will be an opportunity to share, learn and expand.
This trip will be an opportunity for Black midwives and student midwives to immerse in the culture of Traditional Midwifery in Northern Uganda. To work together to create communities of care, centering our collective resilience.
The Black midwives fellowship is a skills development initiative that brings Black midwives to MHI’s birth center to work alongside the midwives there and to exchange skills. The fellowship consist of a year long curriculum that presents and explores the history of the Acholi people, language, midwifery protocols, and trauma informed care. While visiting the birth center the guest midwives will attend prenatal appointments, births, postpartum check ups, and assist in the outreach program. They will also visit with the midwives and present a skill share as to foster community and connection. After the trip the midwives will continue to meet virtually as to integrate their experience and to support them in applying what that learned to their own individual practices and communities. This fellowship intends to provide a tangible example of how centering traditional midwifery care can optimize the maternal health outcomes in communities who are impacted them most.
We are raising funds to reach
Our $10,000 Goal
Donate to the Fellowship Today
Midwives Are The Antidote
For many years we have been building relationship and community with the beautiful people of Atiak. Even through the most heinous of histories they have resurrected and preserved their traditional practices which has sustained their lives. The most impacted people of the maternal health crisis are Black mothers and their infants. We hope to build bridges that invoke transformation, frameworks, tools, and skills to bring sustainable community rooted care to our own communities.