Birth Doula Training - Doula Fund

Hello beautiful community!

 

The Doulas of Duluth are teaming up with Homegrown Families (of Asheville, North Carolina) to host a Doula Training in April 2022. Our goal is to train more doulas for birth support, create better experiences and outcomes for all families, and address inequities and 'isms' in birth that cause poor outcomes for birthing people and babies. 

 

This training is centered around racial equity work. Giving birth is political, parenting is political. Woven into the fabric of this training is the belief that birth work is inherently activism work. It’s important to understand how prejudice, institutional power, oppression, representational racism, institutional racism, interactional racism, and ideological racism play a role in the many intersections of health disparities and inequities. This doula training will address deficit narrative language, giving tools and resources to work together to dismantle systems of oppression. These teachings are at the heart of our work and training.

 

Our doula training is packed with amazing educators: Chama Woydak of Homegrown Families and Cindy McMillan of Sistas Caring 4 Sistas, both out of Asheville North Carolina, are the main trainers. We have 4 guest speakers to talk about LGBTQIA+ care in birth, racism in birth, colonization & birth, and how to adress inequities in our communities. The in-person part of the training is located here in Duluth, Minnesota at the beautiful Great Lakes Aquarium. Event Link for Details

 

As we are aiming to create more diversity and access to our doula training for ALL people, we are offering equity seats to people who want to be Doulas but may have barriers to doing the training. This training costs $800 per person and includes many hours of coursework for the trainees. Both of these things can be huge barriers to people and our goal is to eliminate those barriers. We have several people already signed up for equity seats (6 total so far, totaling $4,800) and we do not want to turn anyone away. It is a financial risk that we are willing to take for our community to bring this training to Duluth. We sincerely hope our community will support us in this endeavor. 

 

Your donation will help cover the cost (in partial or in full) for many people from underserved or minority communities that want to support birthing families and make change in our communities. If we raise enough funds and there is a need for childcare for our attendees, we would like to offer that to them as well!

 

We appreciate your donation so much. Any little bit helps. It is incredibly important to eliminate barriers to becoming a Doula. Having a doula at your birth increases many positive outcomes and provides much needed advocacy and support through a challenging and vulnerable time! Here is more info  on the evidence of doulas! The more money we can raise, the more we can offer to people seeking doula training. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts!

 

-Cooper & Dana of Doulas of Duluth