Healthcare to Save Mothers and Babies

In a few weeks, our next cohort of village midwives will leave their villages for their 10 months training course and return as fully trained midwives.  They are picked to attend the course because of their commitment to helping their community and all have agreed that they will remain in the village for a minimum of four years.

For 14 years, Kids for Kids has been providing basic help right at the heart of the communities that need it.  The difference that the Village Midwives make is incalculable.   In 18 months alone the charity’s  midwives delivered 1057 healthy babies - including twins - and not one mother died in childbirth.   The midwives were successful too in referring expectant mothers to the distant hospital if they were worried about complications - and all were safely delivered of healthy babies!  There are already 108 trained Kids for Kids' village midwives working in remote villages.

Kids for Kids was asked to share the cost of funding a training school with the State Department of Health.  This ensures the support of the Government.  The training provided at this new school is unrivalled and Examiners come from Khartoum to invigilate.  

 Kids for Kids is showing that by providing a midwife who is known and trusted, encourages mothers not to continue the practise of FGM, either for themselves or for their daughters. Despite being banned by the Government of Sudan FGM is still widespread. Our midwives are convincing women in the Kids for Kids' villages to ban the practise.

 Our policy is to provide two villages midwives in each village.   There is no other support for these brave women who may have to face the difficult situation of someone they know dying during childbirth.   With two trained midwives to hand they are able to reinforce the trust the communities have learnt to place in them. The volunteers who are selected by the full community in each Kids for Kids village, to become Village Midwives, are chosen because they are bright, honest and dedicated.   They also commit to staying in the village for a minimum of four years once they are trained.  Many are young women who have young children who will be looked after whilst they are away.  The course is very tough.  The trainee girls are expected to work six days a week.  They are not allowed out of the Midwives Training Compound unescorted.  Some may be illiterate but will have been chosen because they are known to be intelligent.  They will be taught to read and write at the start of the course.  This has been hugely successful and gives new hope, not only to the women who will now have a trusted midwife close at hand, but also the newly trained midwife's family.  They have a future at last.