*Y.C.* Each one for one - rural motherhood network

The proposed idea is to establish safe motherhood networks at basic community level for promotion and protection of women's reproductive rights. By reproductive rights, I mean the rights of women to have control over their bodies; the right to decide freely about the number and spacing of children; and the right to accessible and affordable reproductive health services (United Nations Guidelines on Reproductive Health, http://www.un.org/popin/unfpa/taskforce/guide/iatfreph.gdl.html ). Safe motherhood and options for maternity are the most important aspects of women's reproductive health care. Establishment of a safe motherhood network at village level will offer a strong emotional support system and delivery of quality care to women.
My idea is to establish motherhood networks which will provide maternal support, monitor services and provide information for evaluation of the program. This idea proposes a comprehensive program for service delivery, and monitoring and evaluation (M&E) in rural Nepal. This kind of sustainable network based service delivery and impact evaluation program allows room for improvement and guarantees better maternal services with time.
Mother Groups, commonly known as Ama Samuha, is a traditional volunteer based women’s group in many parts of Nepal. They are mostly self-sustained by fundraising within their community through cultural shows, potlucks for social functions, househo ld donations, and microfinance initiatives. Mother groups in each community can continue to collect funds in the similar manner and allocate certain percentage for safe motherhood initiatives. Once awareness about the importance of women’s networks for safe delivery and women’s health is spread, at least one woman from a household can be recruited. A certain number of women from each community can be given formal doula training, but as the programs expand, these experienced doulas will train other women. Local women’s as doulas, to offer emotional and physical support to each other during maternity, can improve status of maternal health and promote reproductive justice at grassroots level. This sisterhood network will provide common ground for women, outside the boundaries of imposing patriarchy, to talk about their bodies and to share the pride of being women.
Nepal Government and NGOs have extensive training programs for community health care workers. Hence each motherhood network can collaborate with such agencies in their geographic region for basic community health, service record and data collection training. In remote areas where even primary health centers are scare, community health workers are pioneers for health services. Promotion of traditional midwives and grassroots level FCHW as the significant reproductive health service providers will allow better delivery of women’s health in maternity and beyond.
In collaboration with public health division at universities and policy research centers, yearly program evaluation can be conducted. Such evaluation will allow for impact assessment and guidelines for improvement for following year. Further, such service assessment and situation analysis can later be used to develop large scale maternal health programs with support from INGOs.
The joint collaboration of doulas, midwives and FCHW will help to build a strong sense of empowerment in rural women besides providing maternal health care. In communities with strong male dominance, this kind of support system will provide not only provide emotional and physical support to mothers, it will allow women to stand up for themselves and their bodies in solidarity.
Safe motherhood is not an option; it is each community’s requirement. This safe motherhood initiative is dependent on individual women’s willingness to participate in this program. With the ideology of “each one, for one”, friends, relatives and neighbors support during maternity and beyond makes this idea unique.
This idea will bring a positive social change by empowering midwives and female community health workers. It will improve women’s health by creating a support system for all mothers, a sustainable strong motherhood network.