Orishé Midwifery

Orishé Midwifery’s mission is to transform training and education for Midwives across the African Diaspora and the United States through the creation of educational materials and cultural exchanges that are rooted in Traditional Midwifery and facilitate opportunities for student apprenticeships. Orishé Midwifery is born out of #DoulaChronicles which was established in 2017. After 5 years, the founder has assessed the track record and successful impact of #DoulaChronicles and seeks to shift and evolve its mission now to focus on a natural progression that follows the founder’s journey from #DoulaChronicles to a more expansive vision, Orishé Midwifery.

The purpose of Orishé Midwifery is to bring back, sustain and grow Traditional Midwifery in geographies with difficult to reach locations, prone to natural disasters and underresourced environments, as well as institutions where traditional birth work is lacking.

The problem that Orishé Midwifery solves is barriers, criminalization, and prosecution of traditional midwifery in the broader context of the endemic of maternal mortality and morbidity impacting African descendant birthing people worldwide.

Orishe Midwifery’s vision is to build sites throughout the globe where intergenerational Midwives and healers can train, birth, commune and live in alignment with nature, towards Black liberation and sovereignty.

Our long-term impact is to ensure the African cultural preservation of midwifery and create a network of traveling midwives throughout the diaspora who engage in interventions during global health emergencies and disasters. Additionally, our long-term goal is to create sustainability for Traditional African Midwifery projects.

Orishe’s principles and ethos are grounded in Ubuntu, cooperative wisdom, Sankofa, looking back to go forward, and Ase which is intuitive wisdom and confirmation in midwifery practice.

Proposal Narrative: Orishe Midwifery

Midwifery that honors our Ancestors