Community-Based Doula and Maternal Health Safety Skills Training for BIPOC Community Members

Summary: Black Women’s Blueprint administers a culturally relevant information and resource center committed to solutions that make a real structural cultural change that benefit communities and people. Black Women’s Blueprint facilitates training, collaboration and communication steeped in social justice movements and integral to the continued strength and sustainability of the work of organizers, activists, and organizations. In growing partnerships, strengthening relationships, and convening to identify promising practices and emerging trends, Black Women’s Blueprint’s approach to structural cultural change lays the foundation for trainees to better tap the transformative power of moving beyond “cultural competency” to interrupt inequity and create structures that produce and sustain justice.

Description of Doula Certification Program: This doula training is an intensive series of workshops that combine lectures, hands-on skill development, role-playing, group discussions & activities, guest speakers, and much more. We recruit, train, and support people of color and allies as community-based doulas and we provide holistic, culturally affirming doula support to birthing people of color throughout their full reproductive experience to address the inequalities in parental and infant health outcomes. Together with our partners, we train, educate, and support people in communities experiencing marginalization due to race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, culture, and language.

Eligibility for Doula Training

● Individuals invested in providing culturally sensitive pregnancy and childbirth education, early linkage to health care, and other services like labor coaching, breastfeeding support, and parenting education.

● Individuals interested in Comprehensive Full-Spectrum Doula Training

● Individuals who identify as Black, Indigenous, or People of Color and their allies

● Individuals across diversity are welcomed to join the training, including male-identified persons and allies.

● Individuals who expect to be inspired, encouraged, and informed by maternal health education and information.

● Individuals from marginalized communities and communities of color in an effort to address the disproportionately high infant and maternal mortality rate among African-American and Hispanic birthing people in NYC. Allies are welcome to join the doula training as well.

Participants will be able to:

1. Offer non-biased perinatal information, support, encouragement, guidance, and education to families

2. Provide information on birth options and resources

3. Encourage informed patient and family decision-making

4. Perform both medical and non-medical comfort techniques for labor such as movement, position changes, comforting touch, visualization, breathing techniques, affirmations, and more that are culturally sound, appropriate, and affirmative

5. Deliver and provide culturally sensitive and age-appropriate education to clients, birthing patients and families

6. Find healthcare professional pathways within and outside of their current academic track

7. Foster a cooperative, respectful, and positive relationship within the healthcare professional paths