Host Shaheed Haamid interviews Shafia Monroe, Founder and President of International Center for Traditional Childbearing (ICTC) and community activist devoted to infant mortality prevention, breastfeeding promotion, and increasing the number of midwives of color.
In addition to being a Certified Midwife by the Massachusetts Midwives Alliance, Shafia Monroe is also a Childbirth Educator, a Doula Trainer, and mother of seven children. She is a health activist, organizer, and international speaker.
Monroe formed the Traditional Childbearing Group in 1976, in part because of the need for better health within Boston's Black community, but also because White women dominated the field and opportunities for aspiring Black midwives were few and far-between. Monroe was profiled in the book “Granny Midwives and Black Woman Authors" for her ground breaking work in training African American midwives in Boston, Massachusetts, her hometown.
Monroe's African spiritual and ritual-based practice was also chronicled in a photographic essay in the Boston Globe before her move to Portland in the early 1990s. For over twenty years, Shafia has successfully reached out to Black women from every walk of life and has served as a midwife for thousands of women. Shafia has conducted countless childbirth classes, breastfeeding promotion classes, parenting classes and worked on legislation with others to help bring the services of midwives to all women.