Mother Tongue (MT) is a project which aims to offer more culturally appropriate and language-specific doula and peer support to those without English who are pregnant, birthing or newly mothering.
Doulas Without Borders has created this project in direct response to interrelated crises within maternity care. Some women with refugee status (for example) are going through their entire maternity care experience without language support. This lack of shared language contributes to the disparity in survival rates between women during the childbearing year.
Mother Tongue offers funded peer support and birth support training, with a follow-up of mentorship, extending from the end of the training.
OBJECTIVES
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Work towards the improvement of maternal and neonatal wellbeing by offering continuous, language-specific and culturally appropriate support
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Help populate our organisation (DWB) with linguistically and culturally knowledgeable MT Doulas, by inviting our graduates to offer some voluntary service after training
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Provide the opportunity for further employment for MT Doulas via our certificated training
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Support towards social inclusion, empowerment and enriched community for (and between) service-users and MT Doulas.
FACILITATED BY
Kate Woods
Mother Tongue project founder and director, accredited Doula Educator and course writer, DWB founder
Amina Hatia
Specialist Midwife and DWB Community Elder
Şebnem Susam-Saraeva
DWB Doula and Senior Lecturer in Translation Studies, University of Edinburgh