The Mothership Connection

Birthing Beautiful Communities (BBC) is a village of birth workers or doulas who primarily provide social support to pregnant women at highest risk for infant mortality during the perinatal period. Our mission is to address and improve the systemic and community structures that lead to poor birth outcomes by executing a multi-layered, holistic method which creates workforce and social opportunity for local women. The birth workers are highly trained and skilled in various areas, including labor support, stress management, emotional support, breastfeeding and contraception education.

Among other services, we provide transportation for our clients to and from classes, pre and post natal appointments, as well as the grocery store. We currently are using Uber and spend about $8,000 per client for the duration of their time in our program (72 weeks). We currently are serving over 145 families, and Uber is no longer cost efficient. We want to provide the same service in a way that's more economically and environentally responsible. By carpooling and purchasing two hyrbid passenger vans to accommodate our growing BBC family we we will be able to lower infant mortality rates & carbon emissions in Cleveland!

Purchase the two vans from Enterprise 

Insure the vans and register them with the State of Ohio

Get the vans wrapped with our logo

Begin providing in house transportation

Ohio has an infant mortality rate that rivals third world countries. Those rates are as high as 6 times the national rate in some Cleveland neighborhoods are highest amongst communities of color. The focus of BBC are the social determinants of health and real-life circumstances that at-risk mothers face, making them vulnerable to infant death.  The core of our organization is social cohesion. Communities of color have indigenous ties to community interconnectedness. The lack of social cohesion/capital is strongly linked to higher infant mortality rates amongst African Americans in the United States.

Our trained birth workers address the basic, grassroots issues of infant mortality, such as, isolation, instability, deficient education, underdeveloped parenting skills, risky behavior and lifestyle choices, and poor nutrition. BBC functions and serves the purpose of providing real time learning opportunities that will increase the understanding of how and why the social determinants of health affect unborn children, and what resources are available or need to be created, in order to increase the likelihood of infant survival at one year and beyond.

In addition to the current services and training that BBC provides, it is part of our vision to develop an emergency shelter facility to address chronic homelessness of pregnant women, and open a birthing center in the City of Cleveland, that will provide expecting mothers with culturally sensitive birthing options.