Help Black Midwives Learn and Share in Uganda

Saying who I am as a Birthworker and a Child Birth Educator
That I am traveling to support MIH Birth center and the tradition midwives. I also would like to bring them supplies.
 
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.
 
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 and resilience.
 
Led by traditional midwives Summayah 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.