Connecting with Doulas: Come Meet Us at DONA 11 and Online

Doulas are best known for their ability to reduce interventions and improve maternal satisfaction in birth. But doulas play other important roles, too, such as educating women about their birth options, including midwifery care. Doulas also tend be very active in their local birth communities, helping with local and statewide efforts to improve maternal health. Where appropriate, doulas help mothers transform their birth experiences, gently guiding women to activism.

This is why Citizens for Midwifery is so excited to attend the Doulas of North America (DONA) International conference in Boston, MA this week. We’ll be in exhibitors area, sharing information about Citizens for Midwifery and meeting doulas from across the nation.

At the conference, we’ll also be holding Citizens for Midwifery’s first ever friendraiser, creating as many “virtual” friends as possible! We’ll be reaching out to doulas with two goals.

• For those already using social media, we hope to build and connect our virtual networks. Together, we can significantly increase our reach, educating more mothers with evidence-based information about birth and key policy issues.
  
• For those not yet active with social media, or just learning the ropes, we’ll have our laptops fired up, ready to show you how to get signed on!

Why a friendraiser? Because all of the impactful things that a doula does face-to-face - educating families, empowering mothers, connecting women to critical policy issues - can and are being done on social media. Doulas have been among the first birth professionals to embrace these new tools. We want to connect our communities, share tools, and make healthy birth - and midwifery care - go viral!

Three ways to participate in the CfM friendraiser:

1. Share this post on your networks and encourage your family and friends to like us on facebook, follow us on twitter and sign up for our free email list. (Make sure you're connected up too!)
   
2. If you're at DONA this weekend tweet make sure you're signed up for Twitter and tweet under the #DONA11 hashtag. Follow us and give us a shout out by mentioning @cfmidwifery and we'll make sure to retweet and follow you back. Similarly, mention us in a facebook status or post on our facebook page. Watch for conference give-aways and come introduce yourself.
   
3. If you are not attending DONA help spread the amazing information that will be coming out of the conference by following the #DONA11 hashtag on twitter. Come swing by our facebook page--we'll be posting pics and updates throughout the week.

Bonus! If you share this post on your facebook page tag us and we'll head over to like your page AND post your birth page on our wall. This way we can all grow our networks!

When we make these powerful connections--online and in-person-- we're helping to promote the Midwives Model of Care and organizing for future legislative pushes.

Your participation is important and greatly appreciated.

A big thanks to YourDoulaBag.com, Mama Pear Designs and Jillian's Drawers for donating items for us to give-away to friendraiser and conference participants.