Overview: The Sankofa Birthworkers Collective of the Inland Empire recently completed their Midwifery Access Project (MAP) graduation for their final cohort of mothers, providing free maternal health initiative to expand access to midwifery-informed prenatal education and support across Riverside and San Bernardino Counties. The program educated participants in areas of prenatal care, childbirth, lactation, parenting, nutrition, and movement from local midwives. The MAP program has made a significant impact on first-time parents-to-be, providing them with a supportive and informative experience, and helping them build a sense of community.
Alyssah Hall
The Sankofa Birthworkers Collective of the Inland Empire hosted a Midwifery Access Project (MAP) graduation for their final cohort of mothers on March 15 at The Gift Box in Fontana.
With the closing of maternity wards like Corona Regional in 2025, this free maternal health initiative was created to expand access to midwifery-informed prenatal education and support across Riverside and San Bernardino Counties. The program was made possible by a grant provided to Sankofa through the Kaiser Foundation. Their first cohort to complete the program were mothers based in Riverside County, and their final cohort consisted of mothers based in San Bernardino County.
Participants were educated in the areas of prenatal care, childbirth, lactation, parenting, nutrition and movement by local midwives. The project coordinator is birth and postpartum doula Stannis Askew, and the midwives’ educators are Celest Winfrey, Taylor Digby, Emma Moreland, and Leslie McFarlane. The facilitators of this program include Akasi Francis-Mora, Lee Walker, LaNeisha Johnson and Jasmine Creighton.
Midwife Moreland shared the importance of the program for people who don’t have access to midwifery care and who are looking for more time with their care provider. She said that participants can see their doctors for 10 to 20 minutes for prenatal appointments, but through the MAP initiative, they are able to get their questions answered, be educated and are provided with supplemental care.
“Sankofa incorporated a lot of the wisdom from the midwives, cultural congruent care, things of that nature. They got to meet doulas, they got to meet lactation consultants and body workers in the process. Each cohort ended with a baby shower for the participants and graduation. There were lots of successes in the program. Some of the babies have already been born,” shared Chantel Runnels, Sankofa’s doula of operations.
“We are so happy to be able to have done this historical program. We just wanted to let moms know that the wraparound care, is not necessarily to replace the care that they are [given], but we are seeing with this program that the midwives are catching a lot of things that have been missed by the OBs,” explained Lee Walker, a doula and program facilitator. Walker explained that sometimes providers can miss things, not due to incompetence, but because they don’t see the patients as often as midwives due, or may not be as thorough as midwives are.
Walker shared that in the MAP program they ask their participants about their diets, exercise, supplements, hydration, and give them practical tips on how to get the best results in their pregnancy without being “so medical” and “sterile.” Walker enjoys making lifelong connections with the moms and shared that they are making sure these mothers have doulas so that even after the program ends they are still connected and have a sense of community.
The graduation was decorated like a baby shower by one of the program facilitators and doula, LaNeisha Johnson. The participants brought their partners, mothers, family and friends to the event for support. The celebration also had food and treats for the mothers, followed by gifts for all of them that included waist beads, socks, baby onesies, baby combs, tea for the dads, bonnets, and baby blankets from the Talking Angels Foundation. A gift raffle was held, where they had the moms pick a ticket and if their ticket was called they would receive a postpartum mom kit with pajamas and pads and other essentials; baby diapers and supplies were also given.
“We’re just celebrating and loving on the moms and the dads, because they have been phenomenal throughout this process as well,” stated MAP program coordinator Stanis Askew. “The project overall was something near and dear to my heart, and the fact that just wanting to nurture/educate the community like ‘hey, you have options in your care.’ You don’t have to have all the money. That’s not for the elites. It is for the common person to have.”
The MAP program has made an impact on 22-year-old first-time parents-to-be, Tristen Tate and Jamal Ware. Ware shared that the program has been a very warm, welcoming, informative and supportive experience for him. He appreciated the different facilitators at each meeting for preparing them for labor and birth and also bringing the participants together in community, no matter their situation.
Tate is in her last semester of college and has found this time in her life to be very difficult, chaotic and overwhelming. She also mentioned not having a lot of family support and a rocky relationship with an unsupportive mother. Tate expressed how necessary the MAP program has been for her and her partner, stating that it has been the primary form of support that they have been able to receive.
“Being able to come to this program where we’re consistently surrounded by caring, consistent, Black women who are all very knowledgeable, very genuine, very supportive. And, from the time we walked in the door, they’ve just taken the time to get to know both me and Jamal and our individual stories and our personalities. Some of them have even reached out to us outside of the program and we’ve been able to build relationships in that way,” Tate shared.
“Everything has been very uncertain, but this has been the one thing that has been very consistent, very positive for us. The person that recommended me to do this program, I don’t think she even would have known how positive of an experience I was going to have. I feel like she thought she was just giving like resources. But this has been the one thing that’s been everything that it has set out to be,” Tate continued.
Another set of first-time parents-to-be in the MAP program is Priscilla Valenzuela and her partner Adam Schneider. Valenzuela knows one of the founding members of Sankofa Birthworkers Collective, Deidre Medley Coutsoumpos, who told her about the program. Valenzuela shared that it’s been a supportive experience that has made her pregnancy journey more pleasurable.
“But it’s been really nice … especially this first and second trimester, when you don’t go to the doctor a lot. You don’t get a lot of checkups. You don’t know what’s happening. And coming every week to meet with the midwives, him getting to know more information about it, and just hearing our baby every week — it’s just been really, really nice and really comforting,” Valenzuela said.
Schneider said the experience has been great and he had a lot of questions, but felt it was a comfortable place for him to ask those questions.
“It was just a fantastic experience. I learned a whole lot. We met some great people. We made a few friends along the way. I’d recommend it to anybody and everybody,” Schneider proclaimed.
During the celebration there was a toast led by Runnels and the event wrapped with a Pregnancy Support Prayer led by one of the founding members of Sankofa, Dr. Sayida Peprah-Wilson.
“You are held. You are loved. You are cared for, and there’s a divine purpose for your life and for the life of your baby and for the life of your family, and we are in gratitude and thanksgiving for all the blessings to come,” Dr. Peprah-Wilson prayed.
“The importance of the program has really been to provide the participants with the ability to not only interact with the midwives, but to really build community amongst one another…It’d be awesome to see more of this. So hopefully that can happen [in] different counties, different cities, and just be continuous, and maybe something that can last even longer than the weeks that we’re able to provide,” said program facilitator Akasi Francis-Mora.