Changing the World With Social Media
Announcing I Am A Midwife Public Education Campaign

Greeting Midwives-we have exciting news!

The Midwives Alliance is about to increase our engagement in the very public and hotly debated conversations about childbirth and what matters to women regarding their maternity care. In order to have an influence on these conversations, we are going where most women of reproductive age get their information about pregnancy and birth. This is not from doctors, not from books, not from their mothers, and not from midwives You guessed it, they learn from the Internet!

Our new public education campaign - I Am A Midwife - will showcase the profession of midwifery and the midwives model of care by profiling individual midwives across the country. Our goal is to create a powerful cultural narrative around midwifery and to provide midwives with a platform for defining who they are on their own terms, in their own environments, using their own words.

I Am A Midwife campaign is intended to be grassroots and inclusive, expressing a core strength of the Midwives Alliance-our support of midwives in all settings. As a culture, much of what we believe about pregnancy and birth is shaped (or warped) by the never-ending barrage of words and images we receive about these topics through the media. Our goal is to build the case for women to view pregnancy, labor, and birth as normal, natural processes and encourage women to seek care from a midwife.

How Can You Get Involved?

At our upcoming and historic conference - a collaboration among CAM, ACNM and MANA entitled North American Midwifery: Beyond Boundaries-we will begin production on I Am a Midwife campaign. Filmmaker, educator, and birth activist Nicolle Littrell of Woman in the Moon Films will be interviewing midwives. She will produce a series of diverse video portraits representing a diverse and multicultural selection of midwives across the nation.

I Am A Midwife campaign will provide a glimpse into the lives of everyday midwives and will answer questions about who a midwife is and what s/he does by profiling the diversity of midwives practicing in all settings-urban, rural and tribal areas, hospitals, birth centers, homes, and academia.

We are inviting midwives who are attending the MANA 2011 Conference in Niagara Falls to become our poster midwives. You will be the first midwives to be featured in I Am A Midwife public education campaign.

In spring 2012, I Am a Midwife will be launched, distributed, and promoted through a variety of online and social media platforms. By focusing on midwives in different communities and using social networking tools, we hope to raise public awareness about midwifery care, with the ultimate goal of increasing access to midwives. We plan to influence the conversation about childbirth in North America.

How You Can Sign Up

We are seeking interview participants for this exciting public education initiative! It is important to us that we represent diversity in interviewing midwives, in order to reach as many communities as possible, and speak to as many viewers as we can. MANA will select 21 midwives to participate in the "pilot" part of this project.

Interviews at the conference will last approximately 30 minutes and will be documented in an intimate and comfortable setting by Nicolle. If you are selected to participate, your interview time will be scheduled in advance, and you will be provided with several questions to consider before you are interviewed. The whole project is intended to be educational and inspirational as well as fun. And it will be free advertising for you!

Are You Ready to Jump In?

If this is something you would like to do, email info@mana.org and answer the following four questions briefly:

1. Where do you practice midwifery? (Region of the country, your state, town, or locality)

2. What is the setting in which you practice? (Clinic, hospital, home, birth center)

3. How long have you been practicing?

4. As mentioned earlier, getting a diverse sampling of midwives (race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, routes to entry, education, populations served, practice styles and settings, etc.) is especially important to MANA. What can you tell us about diversity in regards to how you identify yourself, where you work, and/or with whom you practice?

Please email us at info@mana.org with the answers to your questions before November 1 to be considered. Thank you so much for taking the time to sign up for this exciting project!

Feel free to share this opportunity with other midwives in your world who are planning to attend the 2011 MANA/CAM/ACNM Conference.  

We will be back in touch before the conference to let you know if you have been selected to participate. Thank you again for your interest and time!

Remember-change starts with stories. The stories of how we live our lives influence one another. Your stories matter. Won't you please share them for I Am A Midwife?

See you in Niagara Falls!

Geradine Simkins, Interim Executive Director, Project Co-Manager

Nicolle Littrell, Educator-Filmmaker

p.s. You can view Nicolle's work with "At Home in Maine" at mainehomebirth.wordpress.com. To view the MANA! film go to vimeo.com/3130025

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