Doulas Bringing Healthy Birth Practices Worldwide
During challenging times such as these, it’s vital to uncover and bring light to the beautiful, selfless and love-inspired work being done throughout our local and global communities. Our partners Children Incorporated and Sakhi for South Asian Women prove to us that none of us are isolated in our current fight for food, economic, emotional, or physical security.
Similarly, our third partner, Wombs of the World (WOTW), is ingrained in the very act of bringing light into our world by ensuring the healthiest birth practices possible. In response to a system that has turned birthing into a business, they provide pregnant women and mothers in Tanzania and Ecuador the opportunity to learn best practices in preparing, delivering, and caring for their babies. WOTW “supports maternal health by offering international educational programs to professional doulas” so that they may “deepen their practice, travel internationally, and share their skills and expertise in local maternity clinics.”
Along with the invaluable experiential and cross-cultural learning that doulas and mothers gain through WOTW’s programming, they are also establishing a local doula-training program in the Karatu district of Tanzania so that local women can provide doula support to their own community. WOTW has designed a curriculum that is “culturally relevant, mindful, and addresses the needs of the local people” and will subsequently fund three full-time salaries of medical students to become professional doulas after attending the course.
Organic Baby Food Shop fully believes in the sustainability and effectiveness of consistent doula support and the positive health and happiness impacts it has on children and their birthing parents. We have lived it and we believe in the power of increasing doulas’ presence throughout the world. Doula care requires “no major additional resources, equipment or technology”– its main component is compassion for all people involved in the birthing process. We are so grateful for Womb of the World’s stewardship and conscious mentality in bridging cultural barriers in the name of respecting the dignity of every birthing person and their unique home communities.
We are excited for the doula-training program to come to full fruition when COVID-19 allows the WOTW team to return to Tanzania. In the meantime, we at Organic Baby Food Shop have partnered with WOTW to provide crucial personal protective equipment (PPE) for their local health-care colleagues located in Karatu where PPE can be sparse in normal times.
Wombs of the World is eager to get back to Tanzania and implement this crucial doula-training program. Nonetheless they still have numerous essential costs to cover including ultrasound machines, facilities, salaries for the local women, travel and supplies. Please join us in supporting their mission by contributing to their fundraising campaign as we see their work and curriculum hold immense potential to act as a model for other communities to replicate as well.
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