SOCIAL GOOD: #WorldMoms Make Birth Safe In Laos #CleanBirth

SOCIAL GOOD: #WorldMoms Make Birth Safe In Laos #CleanBirth

As many of you know, less than 3 years ago, I started an organization, CleanBirth.org, to make birth safer in Laos.  We have had great success in 2014 with 2,000 Clean Birth Kits (hygienic birthing supplies that prevent infection) delivered and 88 Lao nurses and staff trained.

Zero mothers who used the kits reported an infection in themselves or their babies!

$5 Clean Birth Kit

$5 Clean Birth Kit

In my mind, CleanBirth.org’s success and World Moms Blog are inextricably linked.

When CleanBirth.org was in its infancy, I was approached by fellow World Mom, Nicole Melancon of Thirdeyemom, to join this amazing group of writers and moms from around the world.

When I asked founder, Jennifer Burden, for World Mom Blog’s support for our first crowd funding campaign in January 2013, she gave an unhesitating “Yes.”  I felt such gratitude as fellow bloggers profile pictures changed to CleanBirth.org’s logo. Having the support of all of YOU: accomplished professionals, writers, and world changers gave me such confidence.

Dee, Kristyn and the US Ambassador to Laos

Dee, Kristyn and the US Ambassador to Laos

Together we met that funding goal and then again in 2014 goal.  With your support, I am confident that we will raise what we need for our upcoming training trip.  This March, we will return to Laos, to train local nurses on Clean Birth Kits and the WHO’s Essentials of Newborn Care, through an alliance with Yale University School of Nursing.  The Yale Midwives, whose travel is funded by the School of Nursing, are the perfect partners for educating nurses on safe birthing practices.

Yale & CleanBirth Training of Laos Nurses

Yale & CleanBirth Training of Laos Nurses

Please consider contributing to our crowd funding campaign this year. A donation of just $5 provides a mother with a birth kit and education by the nurses we train.  Join your voice with ours on social media.

Because no mom should lose her baby to a preventable cause.  And no baby should lose their mom.

$5 Saves 2 Lives

$5 Saves 2 Lives

Here are some ways to get involved:

  1. Donate http://startsomegood.com/cleanbirthlaosScreen Shot 2015-01-25 at 12.48.18 PM
  2. Join our WMB hosted Twitter Party Jan 29 1-2 EST #CleanBirth
  3. Take a picture with a handwritten sign $5 Saves 2 Lives #CleanBirth and post on FB or Twitter.
  4. Blog & share posts from CleanBirth.org’s FB page.

Thank you for helping us help mothers who lack adequate access to maternal health services!

This is an original post written for World Moms Blog by Kristyn Zalota founder of CleanBirth.org.

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Kristyn Zalota

Kristyn brings her years of experience as an entrepreneur and serial volunteer to CleanBirth.org. She holds a MA, has run small businesses in Russia and the US, and has volunteered in Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Uganda on projects related to women’s empowerment. After having children, Kristyn became an advocate for mothers in the US, as a doula and Lamaze educator, and abroad, as the Founder of CleanBirth.org. She is honored to provide nurses in Laos with the supplies, funding and training they need to lower maternal and infant mortality rates in their villages.

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Field Report #EthiopiaNewborns: Mosebo Village Health Post

Field Report #EthiopiaNewborns: Mosebo Village Health Post

Elizabeth Atalay

We had just spent the night at the source of the Blue Nile River. Lake Tana sits in Bahir Dar, Ethiopia, and as our caravan of Land Cruisers wove through the countryside from Bahir Dar to Mosebo I took in deep gulping breaths of sweet fresh Ethiopian air. The lush colors of our surroundings looked to me like they had been enhanced in Photoshop in the way that everything seemed to pop.  How could I feel this emotional connection to place that was never mine? A place I had never been?

Though this is my first time in Ethiopia, the verdant landscape brought me back to other rural parts of Africa I’d traveled through in my youth, similar topographies that had stayed with me ever since.  This time I’d returned to the continent as a new media fellow with the International Reporting Project to report on newborn health. World Moms Blog Editor Nicole Melancon of ThirdEyeMom is a fellow on the trip as well, and last week wrote about our initial overview of maternal and newborn health in Ethiopia. Now we were heading to one of the villages housing a Health Post, which serves the local and surrounding population of approximately 3,500 people.

Photo by Elizabeth Atalay

Mosebo Village is part of Save The Children’s Saving Newborn Lives program, and as such is looked to as a model village in the Ethiopian Government’s plan to reduce maternal and newborn mortality.  Mosebo is a rural agrarian community that produces wheat, teff and corn.  There I met seven-year-old Zina whose mother, Mebrate was about to give birth.  Through our translator Mebrate estimated her age to be around 26, and told us that Zina was her first child. For economic reasons she and her husband had waited to have a second.  When she had Zina, Mebrate had gone to her parent’s home to give birth, as women in Ethiopia often do. It is estimated that 80% of Ethiopian mothers will give birth in their home, often without a trained health care attendant. Towards the end of Mebrate’s first pregnancy she went to live with her parents as her family instructed, until after the baby was born.  In that way her mother could help her deliver, could care for her and the baby, and feed her the traditional porridge after birth. Although there were no complications during her delivery, sadly, many young mothers giving birth at home are not as fortunate. The time period during and around birth are the most vulnerable for the lives of both the mothers and babies. The Saving Newborn Lives Program aims to reduce maternal and newborn mortality beginning with awareness programs and antenatal care on the local level at Health Posts like the one we visited in Mosebo.

Mosebo Health Post

The Mosebo Health Post and Health Extension Workers

We had met Tirgno and Fasika, the two Health Extension Workers at the Mosebo Health Post earlier that day as they showed us the two room interior, and explained their role in improving maternal and newborn health.  They work to raise awareness in the community about the importance of antenatal care, and the potential dangers of giving birth at home for both mother and child. Newborn health is interdependent with maternal health, and the most prevalent causes of newborn mortality, infection, Asphyxiation, pre-maturity or low birth weight, and diarrhea can often be avoided with proper care.   These days in Mosebo after receiving antenatal care at the Health Post women are then referred to the regional Health Center for deliveries.

Zina shyly smiled when we ask her how she felt about having a new sibling, she stood straight and tall listening intently as we asked her mother about the babies’ arrival.  When Mebrate goes into labor this time, with her second child, she will embark on the walk along rural dirt roads for around an hour to the nearest Health Center to give birth.

Elizabeth Atalay is reporting from Ethiopia as a fellow with the International Reporting Project (IRP). This is an original post written for World Moms Blog.

You can follow all IRP reports by World Moms Elizabeth Atalay & Nicole Melancon at #EthiopiaNewborns

Elizabeth Atalay

Elizabeth Atalay is a Digital Media Producer, Managing Editor at World Moms Network, and a Social Media Manager. She was a 2015 United Nations Foundation Social Good Fellow, and traveled to Ethiopia as an International Reporting Project New Media Fellow to report on newborn health in 2014. On her personal blog, Documama.org, she uses digital media as a new medium for her background as a documentarian. After having worked on Feature Films and Television series for FOX, NBC, MGM, Columbia Pictures, Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox, and Castle Rock Pictures, she studied documentary filmmaking and anthropology earning a Masters degree in Media Studies from The New School in New York. Since becoming a Digital Media Producer she has worked on social media campaigns for non-profits such as Save The Children, WaterAid, ONE.org, UNICEF, United Nations Foundation, Edesia, World Pulse, American Heart Association, and The Gates Foundation. Her writing has also been featured on ONE.org, Johnson & Johnson’s BabyCenter.com, EnoughProject.org, GaviAlliance.org, and Worldmomsnetwork.com. Elizabeth has traveled to 70 countries around the world, most recently to Haiti with Artisan Business Network to visit artisans in partnership with Macy’s Heart of Haiti line, which provides sustainable income to Haitian artisans. Elizabeth lives in New England with her husband and four children.

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SOCIAL GOOD: CleanBirth.org Teams Up With Yale University to Empower Local Nurses In Laos

SOCIAL GOOD: CleanBirth.org Teams Up With Yale University to Empower Local Nurses In Laos

CleanbirthAs many of you know, my organization CleanBirth.org works to make birth safer in Laos, which has among the highest rates of maternal and infant mortality in the world.

Due to the generous support of so many of you in 2013, with our local Lao partner Our Village Association, CleanBirth.org provided 2,000 AYZH Clean Birth Kits, served 150 villages, trained 15 nurses and 20 Village Volunteers.

The training of the last group, Village Volunteers, is particularly exciting.  The nurses we train about Clean Birth Kits and safe birthing practices, have begun passing their knowledge to women from each remote village.

The nurses explain how to use and distribute the Clean Birth Kits, as well as how to track their use with a picture data sheet.  They cover topics like safe pregnancy, the importance of having a partner during delivery (many women birth alone) and the importance of exclusive breastfeeding.

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Photo provided by CleanBirth.org

A government representative who attended the Village Volunteer training in December 2013 was impressed and said, “We need more of these trainings throughout the Province.”  That kind of validation from the government is essential to scaling up the project.

 

 

In another positive development that will enable us to expand training for nurses and Village Volunteers, CleanBirth.org has formed an alliance with the Yale University School of Nursing.

In July 2014, Yale Midwifery students will teach 30 local nurses the World Health Organization’s Essentials of Newborn Care. The Essentials are: clean birth, newborn resuscitation, skin to skin newborn care, basic newborn care and breastfeeding.   This information will then be incorporated into the Village Volunteers training.

By providing access to the midwives from Yale, our Lao partners, the local nurses and Village Volunteers will have more tools to improve care for mothers and infants.  This promotes our mission to make birth safer by empowering those on the ground with the training and resources they need.

We want to maximize the Yale Midwifery visit in July 2014 by raising $8,250 to fund the training of  30 nurses.  To that end, CleanBirth.org is launching a crowdfunding campaign from February 4 – March 4.

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Photo provided by CleanBirth.org

We are so lucky that World Moms Blog has signed on to support us again this year.  During last year’s crowdfunding campaign WMB raised $685 and tons of awareness.

Please join us February 6 from 12-1 EST and 9-10 EST for a World Moms Blog & CleanBirth.org Twitter Party to talk about making birth safe worldwide. It is easy to join in by going to tweetchat and entering #CleanBirth.

Thank you!

Kristyn

This is an original World Moms Blog post by Kristyn Zalota. Kristyn is the founder of CleanBirth.org, a non-profit working to improve maternal and infant health in Laos.  She holds MA from Yale, is a DONA doula and Lamaze educator.  She lives in New Haven, CT with her husband and two children.  Click here to watch Kristyn talking about her project.  Email her are kzalota@cleanbirth.org. To find out more check out:

Facebook:http://www.facebook.com/CleanBirth

Twitter:https://twitter.com/CleanBirth

Tumblr:http://cleanbirth.tumblr.com/

Pinterest:https://pinterest.com/cleanbirth/

What do you think is in a Clean Birth kit? Click here to find out!

Kristyn Zalota

Kristyn brings her years of experience as an entrepreneur and serial volunteer to CleanBirth.org. She holds a MA, has run small businesses in Russia and the US, and has volunteered in Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Uganda on projects related to women’s empowerment. After having children, Kristyn became an advocate for mothers in the US, as a doula and Lamaze educator, and abroad, as the Founder of CleanBirth.org. She is honored to provide nurses in Laos with the supplies, funding and training they need to lower maternal and infant mortality rates in their villages.

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#Moms4MDGs MDG #5 With Every Mother Counts

#Moms4MDGs MDG #5 With Every Mother Counts

#Moms4MDGs Button copy

In 2000, 189 nations made a promise to free people from extreme poverty and multiple deprivations. This pledge turned into the eight Millennium Development Goals, and was written as the Millennium Goal Declaration .- United Nations Development Programme

MDG-infographic-5

MDG #5 is to Improve Maternal Health  and we are excited to continue our #Moms4MDG campaign  this month by joining forces with Every Mother Counts.

Every Mother Counts is an organization founded by Christy Turlington Burns after her own  frightening experience during childbirth.  Christy became aware that her scenario could have been fatal, as it is for many women globally, without access to the quality healthcare she had been provided. Every year hundreds of thousands of women die during or due to childbirth, mostly from preventable causes. Every Mother Counts works to reach the goal that no mother should have to give her life while giving birth to another. Tomorrow, in conjunction with our Twitter Parties, World Moms Blog contributor Dee Harlow in Laos features a post on the Every Mother Counts Blog about Maternal Health.

We hope you will also join us tomorrow , December 18th,  for our #Moms4MDGs Twitter party to discuss Maternal Health with @everymomcounts at 1:00 EST, and at 9:00 pm EST.  See you there!

P.S. Never been to a twitter party before?  Go to www.tweetchat.com and put in the hashtag: “#Moms4MDGs during the party times. From there you can retweet and tweet and the hashtag will automatically be added to your tweets. And, from there you can also view all of the party tweets!

This is an original post to World Moms Blog by World Voice Editor, Elizabeth Atalay of Documama in Rhode Island, USA.  

 

Elizabeth Atalay

Elizabeth Atalay is a Digital Media Producer, Managing Editor at World Moms Network, and a Social Media Manager. She was a 2015 United Nations Foundation Social Good Fellow, and traveled to Ethiopia as an International Reporting Project New Media Fellow to report on newborn health in 2014. On her personal blog, Documama.org, she uses digital media as a new medium for her background as a documentarian. After having worked on Feature Films and Television series for FOX, NBC, MGM, Columbia Pictures, Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox, and Castle Rock Pictures, she studied documentary filmmaking and anthropology earning a Masters degree in Media Studies from The New School in New York. Since becoming a Digital Media Producer she has worked on social media campaigns for non-profits such as Save The Children, WaterAid, ONE.org, UNICEF, United Nations Foundation, Edesia, World Pulse, American Heart Association, and The Gates Foundation. Her writing has also been featured on ONE.org, Johnson & Johnson’s BabyCenter.com, EnoughProject.org, GaviAlliance.org, and Worldmomsnetwork.com. Elizabeth has traveled to 70 countries around the world, most recently to Haiti with Artisan Business Network to visit artisans in partnership with Macy’s Heart of Haiti line, which provides sustainable income to Haitian artisans. Elizabeth lives in New England with her husband and four children.

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LAOS: Bringing Babies Home

LAOS: Bringing Babies Home

DSC03105One of the most exciting day in any parent’s life is the day we get to bring our baby home. I was ecstatic to bring our two twin babies home, and very scared too about being left on my own to care for them. But it was indeed one of the most exciting days of my life.

On a recent work trip down to Salavan Province in southern Laos, I got to see two beautiful healthy babies on their way home from a district hospital with their parents. I don’t know who was more excited, them or me! To witness that special moment really touched me because of the volunteer work that I’ve been doing with Cleanbirth.org to help expectant mothers and newborn babies get a safe start in life by providing “clean birth kits” to women in rural Laos who would otherwise give birth unattended at home or in the forest using often unsanitary tools that can cause infection leading to death of the mother or child.

For me to know the long and difficult road that these two mothers have taken to give birth safely made the miracle of birth all the more awesome to me. To know that unless they traveled all way to a provincial hospital, they most likely did not get any prenatal check ups, or vitamin supplements, or ultrasounds. Although the standard of care that we consider basic are indeed accessible and cost relatively little because they are subsidized by the government, they are only available in large urban centers. This means that the 70% of the Lao population who live in rural areas either require a lot of resources to receive this care, or get none at all. Many factors contribute to the inaccessibility of the care expectant mothers need including, geographic remoteness, lack of infrastructure and seasonal limitations for travel on rough roads, lack of transport or money to pay, little knowledge of the health requirements of prenatal care or services available, as well as family priorities of working for subsistence living and other household responsibilities, and many others. (more…)

Dee Harlow (Laos)

One of Dee’s earliest memories was flying on a trans-Pacific flight from her birthplace in Bangkok, Thailand, to the United States when she was six years old. Ever since then, it has always felt natural for her to criss-cross the globe. So after growing up in the northeast of the US, her life, her work and her curiosity have taken her to over 32 countries. And it was in the 30th country while serving in the Peace Corps in Uzbekistan that she met her husband. Together they embarked on a career in international humanitarian aid working in refugee camps in Darfur, Sudan, and the tsunami torn coast of Aceh, Indonesia. Dee is now a full-time mother of three-year old twins and continues to criss-cross the globe every two years with her husband who is in the US Foreign Service. They currently live in Vientiane, Laos, and are loving it! You can read about their adventures at Wanderlustress.

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BRAZIL:  1, 2, 3…?

BRAZIL: 1, 2, 3…?

1,2,3It is no secret to those who know me that marrying and having kids wasn’t exactly part of my life plan. I thought someday I might want to, but up to my 24th year of age – which is when I got pregnant with our first child – the feeling hadn’t come up. My husband, on the other hand, wanted to marry and have a bunch of kids from the time he was a teenager!

After a lot of inner work and, above all, after seeing our son’s face for the first time, I fell in love with motherhood. The issue then became: how many children would we actually have? What exactly would be the average between my hesitance and my husband’s “as-many-as-I-can-convince-her-to”?

The answer was part instinct, part serendipity. As a wedding gift, one of my husband’s college professors had a painting made especially for us. The painter did not know us, so (as the story goes) the professor described us as two young, nature-loving, alternative creatures. The piece that resulted – which now hangs right here behind me – portrays a solemn-looking, round-faced couple that is so close they could be Siamese twins. The left hand of each rests on the other’s heart. The girl wears a flower printed dress, has flowers in her hair and a single flower in her hand. The guy wears a suit of sorts. On the side of each of their shoulders is a green, succulent plant, and above each plant is an angel resting on what seems like a marble pillar, one blue, one yellow. Above the couple is a yellow, flying fish.

I was five months pregnant then and had just found out the baby was a boy. The name we chose means “he who tills the earth”. I don’t know who said it first, but we started joking that the blue angel was our boy, the yellow angel was our future second child (a daughter whose name would mean “lady of the waters” in an Indigenous language) and the flying fish would be our youngest (a little boy whose name – a reference to a famous Greek character – would mean “he who balances himself in the air”).

Coincidence or not, here we are almost nine years later with the three of them, born in that order and aged nearly nine, two and a half, and five months. And with the added bonus that both our lady of the waters and our little “flying fish” were born in our tub, to the sign of Pisces!

Having gone through a particularly difficult pregnancy this last time, I constantly tried to convince my husband to undergo a vasectomy. He, however, did not even want to hear about it (like many men I know, he has a huge needle phobia!).

Later, while I was in labor, he said he would do it (talk about good timing!). At that moment I was ecstatic, yet after the baby was born I began to question myself about our decision. I look at that cute little baby (it doesn’t help that he is so calm and sleeps so well!!) and think wistfully, “Oh my, this is the last baby in the house until we have grandkids!” Or now, as the time approaches to start introducing food in addition to nursing, “This is the last time I will be able to smell this pure breast milk breath all the time!” And so on…

My husband of course took advantage of all this and decided to postpone the vasectomy for another two years until I am absolutely sure.

When I stop to really ponder, three seems like a perfect number considering our life style and the way we raise our kids. For instance, we enjoy working from home as much as possible and choose to rely on as little outer help as possible; all of this gets harder with more kids.
Of course, if we “accidentally” did have more children we would find a way. On the other hand, if my husband did undergo a vasectomy and then we later changed our mind, we could adopt (which was a possibility we had considered before having our third child).

Do I really want more kids or am I just attached to this cute baby phase? The truth is, I don’t really know the answer right now! Let’s see what the future has in store…
And you, how many kids do you have? Was it a planned number or did it just happen? How did you decide? Please share your story!

This is an original post to World Moms Blog from our enviro-mama and mother of three in Brazil, EcoZiva.

The photograph used in this post is of the referenced painting commissioned for the author and her husband. It was submitted by the author.

Ecoziva (Brazil)

Eco, from the greek oikos means home; Ziva has many meanings and roots, including Hebrew (brilliance, light), Slovenian (goddess of life) and Sanskrit (blessing). In Brazil, where EcoZiva has lived for most of her life, giving birth is often termed “giving the light”; thus, she thought, a mother is “home to light” during the nine months of pregnancy, and so the penname EcoZiva came to be for World Moms Blog. Born in the USA in a multi-ethnic extended family, EcoZiva is married and the mother of two boys (aged 12 and three) and a five-year-old girl and a three yearboy. She is trained as a biologist and presently an university researcher/professor, but also a volunteer at the local environmental movement.

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