Hi everyone! My name is Victoria Nwankudu, and I have decided to become a Certified Nurse Midwife. This is a gigantic life pivot for me, and I am very excited. My grandmother who raised me was a midwife, as was her grandmother who raised her. I feel at ease knowing I was able to inform my grandmother of my plans when I first started prerequisites for nursing school two years ago. I received her blessing before she passed away in 2022, and she even prayed for my success in those very first classes.

To begin this journey, I have enrolled in Northeastern University to get my Accelerated Bachelor of Science in Nursing (ABSN). If everything goes to plan, I will graduate from that program in December 2025. After that, I plan to work as a labor and delivery nurse for 1-2 years before returning to school to get an MSN or DNP in Nurse-Midwifery.

In order to be 100% sure that midwifery is what I want to pursue for the rest of my life, I applied to Maya Midwifery International's 2024 Summer Immersion Program. I am thrilled to report that I was accepted into this program!!! As a result, I will spend two weeks this summer living at a birthing center in the Western Highlands of Guatemala. This birthing center was founded by and is currently operated by indigenous Guatemalan midwives. An experienced American midwife and RN will live on-site with our cohort throughout the experience. Further, as of this moment, I am the only non-midwife in the entire group!

I am overjoyed to have this opportunity to learn about midwifery in such a hands-on way. I will go on mobile clinic visits with the midwives and attend births with them. I will learn so much about indigenous birthing practices. My grandmother, an indigenous midwife herself, was brilliantly versed in traditional medicine. There is so much age-old wisdom I will never learn in the American universities I attend. I am honored to be able to capture some of that wisdom through this one-of-a-kind program.

SO MANY PEOPLE told me to make a GoFundMe for this and stop trying to afford it myself. SO MANY PEOPLE told me to ask for more than I need and be surprised by the results!

So the breakdown is as follows:

If you've read this far, thank you so much for your time. If you decide to donate, thank you from the very bottom of my heart. I am so grateful. I will be documenting the experience on my Instagram page (@chinyere97), so feel free to follow along!

Sincerely,

Victoria