Education United States Project #45314

Claudia Booker Memorial Midwife Scholarship

by Mercy In Action Vineyard, INC

Project Report | Jan 22, 2026
Exciting Update About Bebe

By Jenny Fox | Project Assistant

Bebe

Dear Friends,

Your unwavering generosity is making a difference! Thanks to you, Black and indigenous midwifery students are succeeding in our program, graduating, and passing the NARM board exam to enter the world as kind and skilled midwives. This is exactly what our dear friend Claudia Booker imagined beside our founder Vicki Penwell as they worked on the details of Mercy In Action College of Midwifery offering scholarships to serious students entering their final two years of midwifery school from the communities that are losing the most mothers and babies.

Last spring, we shared with you about Bebe, a highly motivated student who had completed the first two years of her education and was advancing clinically with excellence. She qualified for our Advanced Track of Study and graduated in December 2025, a semester early! Last week, she took her licensing exam and was thrilled to share with us that she has passed the NARM. Now she is a fully credentialed Certified Professional Midwife employed at the birth center where she was a student. Bebe is also collaborating with other local midwives to start a collective home birth practice.

We are delighted to share this current example of how your giving to this worthy cause achieves its aim. Bebe had a positive impact on families in her community while she was a student to such a degree that the birth center where she was training offered her a job as staff midwife. Working as a staff midwife now, she cares for families with compassionate professionalism, guiding them towards the best outcomes. Thank you for your continued support so that we can keep offering this scholarship for students who will change the world.

Click on the link below for all the details about this scholarship.

In addition, we want you to know that Admissions is Open for joining Cohort 2026, so please share that link with interested friends and colleagues who may want to become a midwife by attending Mercy In Action College of Midwifery.

Links:

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Oct 7, 2025
Half a Million Dollars in Scholarships... and Counting!

By Vicki Penwell | Project Leader

Dear Friends,

This month, we want to focus on celebrating the impact that we have had over the years by offering the Claudia Booker Memorial Scholarship. Mercy In Action College of Midwifery offers a MEAC-accredited, four-year Bachelor of Science in Midwifery program. Our college is community-based, meaning all academic courses are taken online at a distance while students complete their clinical apprenticeship with midwives in their home communities. As you know, we offer a special scholarship for our enrolled students from the people groups who lose the most mothers and babies at birth in America. This scholarship in its present form was designed by Claudia Booker and named for her after she passed in 2020. Students may apply for Mercy In Action College of Midwifery's Claudia Booker Memorial Midwife Scholarship after successfully completing the first two years and entering a clinical apprenticeship. The scholarship covers the tuition cost for the final two years of our Bachelor's program, with qualified students engaging in special mentoring-for-success meetings during all four years.

We also award scholarships to our NARM Prep online course for qualified students from outside our college. Since 2011, when we launched the Grand Challenge with Claudia and Jennie Joseph, Mercy In Action has awarded over $500,000 in scholarships to Black and Indigenous midwifery students to attend our Mercy In Action programs. Your generous giving helps fund these scholarships!

If you are interested in reading about how this all got started, the details are documented in an article I wrote for Midwifery Today magazine in 2013, which I have included in the link below.

https://www.midwiferytoday.com/mt-articles/a-scholarship-solution-and-grand-challenge-from-mercy-in-action/

Thank you again for your generosity to this project that seeks to improve birth outcomes in America.

Blessings,

Vicki Penwell

For the Mercy In Action Team

Links:

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Jun 23, 2025
Featuring Lavondria

By Jenny Fox and Vicki Penwell | Project Assistant and Executive Director

Lavondria

Thank you, donors! Your support for this project is making a difference!

Your generosity makes it possible to increase access to midwifery education for the populations who are suffering the highest rates of maternal and newborn mortality and morbidity around childbirth in America-- African American/Black and American Indian and Alaska Natives.

We are delighted to introduce you to another recipient of the Claudia Booker Memorial Midwife Scholarship who successfully graduated from our four-year Bachelor of Science in Midwifery program this spring. Lavondria was a committed student while she was in our program. She has determination and focus, which propelled her to achieve her goals, as evidenced by her personal commitment to success and to midwifery. She also grew her own family while she was in school, studying and apprenticing through her own pregnancies. Lavondria is now working at a birth center in Arlington, Texas, where she will be a huge asset to her community.

The USA is in need of more midwives of color like Lavondria to represent the African American/Black community. She is in a unique position to provide respectful care to diverse families. It remains a sad fact that mothers of color and babies of color are still about three times more likely to have a bad outcome in the childbearing year than other populations giving birth in America.

This scholarship fund has the power to have a direct impact on improving outcomes, as qualified students reach their goal of becoming licensed midwives who are committed to addressing this disparity. Thank you for your continued giving to this important cause!

Blessings,

The Mercy In Action team

Lavondria at a birth during her training

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