Vote for Photo Voice Again--This Time for $1,000!

Safe Mothers, Safe Babies' Photo Voice project has made it through another competition to the semi-final round! You can help us get $1,000 to scale up our work with Ugandan women and men to improve maternal and child health, just be voting. Please vote, and feel free to invite others to do the same!

http://purpose.maker.good.is/projects/PhotoVoice

Photo Credit: Serena Rodriguez

SAFE's CEO, Jacquie Cutts, Featured in the Emerging Innovator Campaign!

An interview with SAFE's Founding President and CEO, Jacquie Cutts, regarding social entrepreneurship and the founding of Safe Mothers, Safe Babies is featured this week on the American Express Emerging Innovator platform at Ashoka Changemakers! Check it out to learn more about SAFE, our legacy, and social innovations in general!

http://pulse.changemakers.com/campaigns/social-investment/2012/04/american-express/#/social-investment/2012/08/an-alternative-participation-based-approach-was-possible/

Vote for SAFE's Photo Voice Project!

We've entered SAFE's Photo Voice project in an Echoing Green mini-grant competition. The winner gets $500 towards their idea, intended to improve the organizations' understanding of those they serve. SAFE would use the money to allow more Ugandan women and men to share their own perspective of maternal and child health, related problems and current/potential solutions, all through photography. After the community photographers took the pictures, we would continue our 2012 initiative hosting photo exhibitions to promote community dialogue about maternal and child health, and to learn more about their perspective towards continuing our defining methodology of demand-driven, participatory development.

PLEASE, go vote for SAFE! Your voice matters, and you can make a difference in helping us to empower additional communities:

http://workonpurpose.echoinggreen.org/questions/4ffddbf24c41b00aee00020a/answers/501b17804c41b00338000104

Launching Photo Voice Project!!

SAFE 2012 International Practicum Student, Serena Rodriguez, launched a brand new project for SAFE this summer called "Photo Voice." In this initiative, rural men and women were trained in the basics of photography, then given digital cameras to "show what maternal and child health meant" to them. In the picture below, some of the photos taken during the project are being viewed by village women at a health fair, which is having the desired effect of stimulating conversation about maternal and child health, the challenges rural communities face, and some of the current and/or potential solutions to improving them! Way to go Photo Voice, and Serena Rodriguez!!

Photo Credit: Serena Rodriguez

Launching the Safe Mama Kit Business!

Safe Mothers, Safe Babies is working with the women from a development association to found a "mama kit" business (mama kits are also known as clean birthing kits, containing the necessary supplies required by a hospital for a clean, vaginal delivery). Last year, SAFE Intern from the University of Texas Monika Tomczuk developed the idea for a mama kit business, and this summer, new summer interns and practicum students from the University of Texas and Jefferson Medical School brought the idea to fruition! Below, the women are receiving training about how to handle health products while assembling the kits without contaminating the supplies. We are SOO excited to see this project finally getting off the ground--special thanks to our wonderful summer interns (last year's and this year's)!

Photo Credit: Serena Rodriguez

Life-saving Light at the Iganga Hospital

Check out this photo of the Solar Suitcase powered LED light allowing surgeons to conduct a life-saving surgery at the Iganga District Hospital this week. Wow!

Photo Credit: WE CARE Solar

Lighting the Darkness in Partnership with WE CARE Solar and Rural Communities!

Can you imagine personally delivering--or birthing--a baby in total darkness? What if your wife, mother, sister, or friend needed to undergo an emergency cesarean section to save her life or the life of her unborn child's? These thoughts are terrifying, and Safe Mother, Safe Babies believes that nobody should ever face such conditions as a reality. That is why SAFE partnered with WE CARE Solar to bring Solar Suitcases to Ugandan health facilities' maternity wards and operating theaters. Our first set of installations took place in December, but right now, WE CARE Solar is in Uganda doing more installations as we speak! Check out the pictures and captions below for some insight into their experiences with SAFE! 

Above: Operating Theater Nurse Rebecca with the December-installed Solar Suitcase in the Iganga District Hospital Operating Theater. She is holding the mobile light that the OR team uses during cesarean sections (so they can get just the right positioning) when the power goes out! WE CARE Solar Technical Director and Engineer, Hal Aronson, is in the background.

Above: WE CARE Solar Executive Director, Laura Stachel, and Technical Director, Hal Aronson, at the Lubira Health Center Solar Suitcase Celebration! The community groups with which SAFE works put on a HUGE celebration to promote the Solar Suticase and celebrate the help they received from WE CARE Solar and SAFE. It featured songs, dramas, dancing, and a health fair, and was the biggest celebration we've had yet (hundreds of people came)!

Above: During the celebration, Laura Stachel (clinically trained OB/GYN) went into the health center to help deliver a health baby boy under the newly installed Solar Suitcase lights. The mother was so appreciative of all the help she received that she named her son "Hal" after Hal Aronson, WE CARE Solar's Technical Director who installed the Solar Suitcase!

This is further proof of the great work that can happen when two dynamic and dedicated nonprofits work TOGETHER to bring sustainable change to rural maternal and child health. We have loved working with WE CARE Solar, and are excited for all the work we will continue to accomplish together, lighting up the darkness, in full and equal partnership with rural Ugandan women, their families, and health facilities.