Welcome to the Love A Mama Collective. We’re all about women empowering women.

31 Days of Women Empowering Women Series - PNG-Bamu-Adriel_Booker-130826-117

 

When we strip all the press releases and polished responses away we know what is really needed – an actual revolution for our daughters, a world transformed into a place where Love prevails, a work that actually requires we not even worry about rolling up our sleeves. We just hold hands and hold hearts and worry about the laundry later. –Adriel Booker

The Love A Mama Collective covers all the projects the girls and I get up to around here:

Bloggers for Birth Kits — providing clean birth kits for women in remote, underdeveloped areas where there’s little to no access to health care facilities or birth providers.

Project Baby Bilum — getting ring slings to mamas who otherwise have to leave their newborns behind while they gather food for their families.

The Sunshine Project — solar suitcases providing solar-powered equipment for emergency obstetrics, midwifery, and other medical work when power is not available.

Days for Girls — sanitary options for girls and women in the developing world.

Love A Mama Midwifery Scholarship Fund — empowering women through formal midwifery education, as well as village birth attendant education, in order that they might empower countless women within their own rural communities.

Mother, baby, and toddler. Giving birth in the Bamu River region, Western Province, PNG.   Weighing Baby Umi. She weighed less than five pounds at 11 weeks old.

The History of the Love A Mama:

A few years ago my husband was travelling for work while I was home alone with Mother’s Day fast approaching. I was exhausted and overwhelmed with the demands of my one-year-old as well as coping with the physical and emotional strains of early pregnancy with our second child.

Who was going to make me breakfast in bed? Who would buy me flowers? Make me a card? Clean my house?

Just who exactly was going to make me feel like Queen for a Day?

I was busy wallowing in self-pity and swimming in my own entitlement when I began to think about the mothers in rural Papua New Guinea who’s biggest hope is to actually survive childbirth. There, in remote areas, the maternal mortality rate is 1 in 7 women – a statistic far too shocking to be ignored. Add to that the fact that far too many babies don’t make it either, and you have a recipe for absolute heartbreak.

Woman and child. Giving birth in the Bamu River region, Western Province, PNG.   YWAM Medical volunteer holding Baby Umi. PNG, Western Province.

Surely those mamas don’t worry about somebody giving them sparkly kitchen floors for Mother’s Day.

Bamio_Western_Province_PNG_memos-1170739   Biro under the banana leaf.

Jolted out of my selfishness by the stark contrast of the sisters in our closest neighboring nation, I decided I’d pour my energy into making their needs known, and helping in a practical, tangible way.

Newborn baby. Giving birth in the Bamu River region, Western Province, PNG.  Helping Bokoro into her house.

Bloggers for Birth Kits was born that Mother’s Day in order to get clean birth kits into the hands of women who otherwise might be giving birth in mud. (Seriously? In the mud? Yes, friends, seriously. Just read dear Bokoro’s Story. She captured my heart like no mama ever has.)

Where Bokoro gave birth under a tarp in the mud in her village in PNG.   Angharad holding Biro, Bokoro's baby.

That first year (2011) we collected thousands and thousands of clean birth kits and we haven’t stopped since. We’ve now broken the 14,000 mark and have resourced health care clinics and maternal health care outreaches in PNG, Nepal, India, the Pacific Islands, Togo, Uganda, and several other developing nations.

clean birth kit contents bloggers for birth kits initiative

Over the last couple of years we’ve put our hand to a few more little projects related to maternal health, and have named our community of women empowering women the Love A Mama Collective.

Gorgeous mama. The women of Bamio, Western Province, PNG.   Josephine and Adriel in Bamio, Western Province, Papua New Guinea.

I’m kinda in love with these girls, and I know you will be too… once you know their stories.

Standing tall. Women of Bamio, Western Province, PNG.   Laughing woman of Bamio, Western Province, Papua New Guinea.

The Love A Mama Collective does more than just throw around good ideas. We make them happen.

In the last three+ years the Love A Mama Collective has:

  • Rallied more than 14,000 clean birth kits.
  • Established a midwifery scholarship to equip women in developing nations to serve and empower their own communities.
  • Purchased 3 medical backpacks, outfitted with midwifery and other primary health care supplies.
  • Received over 130 ring slings for women of the Bamu River region of the Western Province, PNG.
  • Resourced the YWAM Medical Ship with:
    • new Doppler
    • adult and infant CPR masks
    • pelvis model
    • baby model
    • placenta model
    • health education hand-outs for mums (fetal development, etc.)
    • textbooks to assist in the training of local birth attendants and community health workers in rural PNG
    • 21 blood pressure cuffs and stethascopes to give to community health workers who staff outlying aid posts in rural PNG
    • plastic aprons for midwives
    • pregnancy testing kits
    • other consumables such as gauze, medication, sterile gloves, etc.
    • a brand new iMac for further developing teaching resources, record-keeping, and administrative responsibilities

Pregnant mother. Giving birth in the Bamu River region, Western Province, PNG.   Adriel Booker explaining how to use clean birth kits in Papua New Guinea (PNG).