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A BIG thank you and well done to our MW Mud Monsters!

Earlier this year Maternity Worldwide partnered with Mud Monsters Run – an award winning mud and obstacle race that promises not to disappoint!

Over the weekend of Saturday 8th and Sunday 9th October, brilliant Maternity Worldwide supporters became Mud Monsters and took on the mud-tastic challenge with smiles on their faces!

Our supporters were taken on an amazing muddy journey across muddy fields, up steep hills, through woods, washed off in river crossings, navigated through mud craters, fought their way through deep muddy bogs, with up to 120+ obstacles and many more muddy surprises along the way – look at all that mud!

One of our Mud Monster’s, Sarah Thomas, said

“It definitely lived up to it’s name with lots of mud, water, climbing, sliding, crawling and much more! My team helped each other through the course – especially the men pulling us out of muddy situations!! It was a challenge but I loved it!”

Thanks for your fantastic support, what a mud-eriffic event!

The great thing about the Mud Monsters Run is there are so many obstacles that you never have to run very far before taking on a new and exciting obstacle challenge.  People of all abilities and experience are welcomed, whether you regularly compete in obstacle races or are thinking of making this your first one, just pick the distance that is right for you. Mud Monsters are a friendly run that offers encouragement and positivity not punishments, they want everyone to have loads of fun and achieve personal goals along the way, whether it’s beating a previous time, completing the monkey bars, scaling the vertical wall or working as a team to get around the course together.

Fancy the challenge? Grab your friends, family or colleagues and take part in the next Mud Monsters Run with Maternity Worldwide!

The next Mud Monsters Run takes place on Saturday 27th May 2017 – click here to find out more!

Remember, when you become a Mud Monster with Maternity Worldwide you’ll receive 10% off your Registration Fee – just get in touch with Natalie or Kirsty at [email protected] or give us a call on 01273 234033 and we can issue you with our unique discount code before signing up!

For every sign up with Maternity Worldwide, Mud Monsters Run will give back 10% of each registration fee as a donation to us.

We are very pleased to announce that we raised an incredible £1192 from our Wine Tasting event this September!

We wanted to say a HUGE thank you to everyone who attended our fantastic Wine Tasting evening this year – we hope you enjoyed it as much as we did!

As our lovely supporters were welcomed to the popular event with a glass of fizz, The Hanover Centre was full to the rafters ready for local legend, Henry Butler, to spend the evening talking us all through the tasting of 6 delicious wines.

A special thank you to Henry and Cassie from Butlers Wine Cellar for hosting such a fabulously fun-filled evening and for their continued support!

We’d also like to say another BIG thank you to all of the incredible prizes that were kindly donated for this event raffle. Our lucky winners now have the chance to enjoy prizes from:

• The Grand Hotel, Brighton – £50 Spa Voucher
• Buxted Park Hotel – Full Afternoon Tea for Two
• Virgin Active, Brighton – Three Day Family Pass
• Blackbird Tea Rooms – Cream Tea for Two
• Duke of York Cinema – Two Cinema Tickets
• MADE, Brighton – £25 Gift Voucher
• Unity, Brighton – £30 Gift Voucher
• Hello Fresh – Classic Meal Box
• Roly’s Fudge Pantry – Box of Assorted Fudge

What GREAT prizes – thank you!

We look forward to working with Butlers Wine Cellar again for another fabulous Wine Tasting event next year!

Meet Italian midwife, Mavì Puglia, who has been volunteering in the Maternity Worldwide office.

Mavì Puglia, first met Maternity Worldwide during a voluntary placement in Malawi and wanted to finish her volunteering with us in the Maternity Worldwide office to see how both sides of the charity run.

Here Mavì tells you a little bit about herself and her passion for maternal healthcare;

“My name is Mavì Puglia and I’m an Italian midwife. I met Maternity Worldwide during my experience as a volunteer in Malawi at the Pirimity Hospital. I have always embraced the vision of MW and I strongly believe in a world in which women and their newborns have access to quality care throughout the childbirth, wherever they live. I believe that to change the world we must change the way others come into the world, fighting maternal and neonatal mortality in developing countries and doing the best we can so that no woman should have to die giving birth, now and in the future. For this reason I decided to become a Maternity Worldwide volunteer and have been with the team in the offices to better understand how I can help Maternity Worldwide when I return to Italy.

Currently I’m studying at the University Cattolica del Sacro Cuore , in Rome to take a master degree in Nursing and Midwifery. This course gives me the skills to understand the economic and social health contexts, to do research and to have the organisational and clinical governance skills. Next year my final thesis will be about my experience with Maternity Worldwide.

During my time in the Maternity Worldwide office, I have done a lot of interesting things among which included reviewing the Country Plans for Malawi and Uganda and the translation of the Fundraising Pack and Muffins for Midwives resources into Italian. I am excited to use these next May to help to launch my fundraising activities!

Being a part of the Maternity Worldwide team really helped me to better understand how an NGO works from behind the scenes. My goal going forward, is to help Maternity Worldwide by supporting them in future research where possible, create links and relationships in Italy, and to establish future fundraising activities in Italy.”

We want to say a BIG thank you to Mavì for all of her hard work and support while she was with us. It was a joy to have her as part of our office team!

We are very excited to announce that Muffins for Midwives 2016 has raised  an impressive £8147!!

This means that this year has been the most successful Muffins for Midwives we have ever had!  With money still rolling in, we will keep you updated when we know our grand total.  We would like to take this opportunity to say a big thank you to all of the lovely Muffinistas who hosted an event, for all of the guests who attended and to anyone who kindly donated – without your incredible support we would not be able to train more midwives in Africa.

There were Muffins for Midwives events taking place in Australia and all over the UK this year and we loved seeing and hearing about them including garden tea parties with friends, coffee mornings at work and at home, and delicious looking cake sales!  Thank you so much for taking the time to plan such wonderful events, we hope you enjoyed hosting.

It costs just £80 a month to sponsor the training of a midwife, and means we have enough money to recruit two new student midwives!  This is wonderful news and we will keep you up to date about the student midwives we recruit and the progress they make over the next year.  If you would like to keep up to date with our latest news you can sign up to our email newsletter below – whether you’re an experienced Muffinista, considering hosting your own event in the future or you’re interested in becoming an MW supporter, we would love to stay in touch!

Want to get involved?

We will be back next May for more muffins but you can still get involved – Muffins for Midwives events can be held all year round! For a free fundraising pack with everything you need to host your event please click here.

We are very happy to share with you that our first student midwife, Lensa, graduated last month as a BSc Midwife!

With the money raised from our first ever Muffins for Midwives campaign we were able to fund Lensa’s midwifery training and after 4 years of studying, she has now completed her course in Ethiopia.  Here you can see Lensa celebrating her graduation with her proud parents, sister and some of her course friends.

Isn’t it amazing how lovely supporters hosting a Muffins for Midwives event could help to achieve something so wonderful – thank you!

You can read more about Lensa’s story here.

Get involved

1 in 22 women die in pregnancy and childbirth in developing countries.   Having a midwife or skilled birth attendant present at birth is one of the most effective interventions to save lives.  It costs, on average, just £80 a month to train a midwife so together, people here can help midwives in Africa to save the lives of mothers and their babies.

A Muffins for Midwives event can be held any time during the year! If you’re interested in becoming a Muffinista and hosting a tea party, coffee morning or cake sale you can get your free fundraising pack here. Alternatively, please do not hesitate to contact either Natalie or Kirsty in the office on [email protected] or call 01273 234033.

Welcome Brontë!

A BIG welcome to the lovely Brontë who is completing a 10 week University placement with us in the Maternity Worldwide office. Brontë currently studies International Development in Brighton and will return to University in September to complete her final year. During her time with us Brontë will be supporting us with our Social Media and Marketing – we are very excited to have her on board!

Here’s what Brontë had to say about becoming part of the Maternity Worldwide team and what she is looking forward to achieving while she is with us;

“My name is Brontë Evans and I am a third year student studying International Development at the University of Sussex.  I am very interested to see and learn what goes on behind the scenes within a charity as I aspire to work in the charity sector once I have completed my study. Knowing that Maternity Worldwide were based locally in Brighton, I was curious to find out more about their work. After reading about their visions and work overseas from their website and Facebook page, I knew I wanted to be a part of their team and to contribute in any way I could. While I have had some previous experience volunteering with other charities, I was eager to take on a more specialised role so I jumped at the chance to join the Maternity Worldwide team as their Marketing and PR Intern!

I have loved my first few days here and am looking forward to getting stuck in, working with the team and supporting them with a variety of tasks. I have already created a Maternity Worldwide Fundraising Quiz and have done some research to find up to date maternal health statistics using current WHO reports.

Some of the tasks that I have been set to complete during my time in the office will be challenging however, I am very excited to see a project through from start to finish and further my existing skills and knowledge. Knowing that the work I do in my time here will also be contributing to a third year module excites me as it will make this experience even more valuable and make my overall degree much more practical.

I am hoping by the end of my placement with Maternity Worldwide that I will significantly increase my practical experience, have a greater insight into the day to day running of a charity and have furthered my research and marketing skills. I am also hoping to come away with a portfolio of the tasks I have completed independently and as part of the team. All of which will help me in the future by setting me apart from other future job applicants.”

If you are interested spending your University placement with Maternity Worldwide please contact [email protected].  Please note, unfortunately, we are not able to offer placements for less than a month in duration.

Three of our Trustees, Dr Adrian Brown (Chair), Prof Andy Shennan and Mary Russell, attended the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology (RCOG) World Congress in Birmingham in June to present a poster on the work of Maternity Worldwide in Ethiopia and the fingings from Phase 1 of the CRADLE 3 research project.

The first day of the conference had a focus on global health.  It was a great opportunity to network and to hear of all the exciting initiatives that are being undertaken to improve maternal health throughout the world.

Mary and Adrian presented the poster they and Katherine Lattey, a MW volunteer, wrote: entitled ‘Ten years in Ethiopia: what difference did the Millennium Development Goals really make?‘.  The poster focussed on the detailed maternal health needs assessments which was carried out in Gimbie, Ethiopia in 2004 and again in 2014 to determine what impact initiatives from our integrated maternal health programme have had on reducing maternal mortality.

The abstract for this poster was published in a special online RCOG World Congress 2016 supplement of the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology (BJOG).

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1471-0528.14103/full
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1471-0528.14103/epdf

You can download a copy of the poster here.

Andy was involved with a number of presentations and the congress, including the presentation of findings of Phase 1 of the CRADLE 3 trial with Adrian and Nicky Vousden.  Nicky’s excellent presentation of these findings was awarded overall Best Oral Presentation of the congress.

The abstract for this presentation was also published in the special congress supplement of the BJOG.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1471-0528.14085/full
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1471-0528.14085/epdf

In June Maersk very generously donated a 40 foot shipping container to go from our office in Brighton to Malawi for free so we launched an urgent appeal for donations of medical equipment and supplies to send on 30th June.

We have been overwhelmed with the kindness and generosity of our supporters who have donated almost £7,000 worth of equipment, supplies and textbooks.  This was alongside additional donations of medical equipment, baby clothes, knitted blankets and baby vests, medical textbooks, bicycles, wheelchairs, nursing uniforms and an incredible donation of 548 blood pressure monitors which will help to save lives in pregnancy and childbirth.

A special thank you goes to Dave Hack, from Blue Sky Operations, who generously donated a truck full of furniture including desks, chairs, fridges, air con units and cabinets which will be used to kit out our medical reference library and training centre in Zomba Central Hospital.  He also took even more time off, along with his partner Lucy, to help us load the container.  We are very grateful to Dave, Lucy and all of our amazing volunteers who helped us to load the container on Thursday morning and those who helped us to pack up the donations in the week before – we couldn’t have done it without you, thank you!

Grace, our Country Director in Malawi, was visiting the UK for a short time in June and came to visit us in the office whilst we were in the middle of packing up some of the donations.  She was overcome by people’s generosity and had this emotional message for everyone who has donated and helped with our appeal:

Items donated from our wishlist included:

Thank you once again to everyone who made this possible, it is due to arrive in Malawi in late September so we’ll have an update then!

On May 5th, Dr Annette Briley (our Trustee and a Consultant Midwife) attended Edge Hill University celebration for International day of the Midwife as a guest speaker to give a presentation about Maternity Worldwide’s aims, objectives, achievements and projects.

The event was attended by student midwives and qualified midwives as well as other allied health care professionals.

Professor Dame Tina Lavender spoke about her experiences contributing to the global health agenda; Georgia Macad spoke about midwifery in the Philippines and Sian Hipwood spoke about her experiences during her 3rd year elective in Ghana.

The overriding themes of the importance of women’s status in communities, and access to adequate health care to ensure safe births resonated throughout all the presentations.

It was a great opportunity to promote the work of Maternity Worldwide especially Muffins for Midwives and we were delighted to be invited to take part.

Yesterday our Trustee, Mary Russell, attended the Small Charity Week Policy Day Reception entitled The Future of International Aid: Will Small International Development Charities Survive?

This was an interesting and lively debate held at House of Lords.

Small charities working in international development are operating in a challenging environment and in the current economic climate their future can be questioned.  One suggestion was that the future of such charities is through social enterprise.

Small charities are very good at capacity building in the areas in which they work, so the future could be ‘letting go’ of projects once their capacity has been strengthened so that such projects sustain themselves.

It was pointed out that small charities, however, often inspire donor trust as they have deeper and richer relationships with the people who donate and they have excellent links to civil society as they have local conversations.

Questions and comments from the floor after the debate included where does the private sector fit in to this debate?  Also because philanthropy is changing to become more active, and with that small charities are demonstrating increasing innovation, is the real question ‘can large charities survive?’.

We were delighted to be invited to such an interesting event as part of Small Charity Week.