Name: Tess

Social Justice Group: Women: Maternal Health

Date of Fieldwork: November 29, 2018

Name of Organization: Every Mother Counts+Jacaranda Health

Person (people) with whom I met and their job titles:

Type of Fieldwork: Interview

What I did:

Recently we went to the Every Mother Counts office. Every Mother Counts is an organization that focuses on making sure all women have a safe pregnancy and childbirth. We met with them and sat in on a webinar with another organization which is located in Kenya, Jacaranda Health. We sat in on the video conference where they discussed various strategies. It was really interesting and we got to ask questions in the end.

What I learned:

We learned a lot of valuable information about our topic. The organization that is partnering with Every mother Counts, Jacaranda Health, is an organization dedicated to getting help for pregnant women. We learned about their main strategies for getting maternal health care for women in Kenya. One of these strategies was having women be able to ask specific questions about their pregnancy through a text message. These questions could be about them experiencing discomfort, so they can ask if that is a normal thing to occur during these pregnancies.

What I learned about Social Justice “work” and/or Civil and Human rights “work” from this fieldwork:

I learned about how Jacaranda Health tries to help them through many different strategies. They have many different ways that they help women, from providing maternity clinics to getting them the specific help that they need for their pregnancy. They fought to get the hospitals funded by the government, and they had to bring these cases to court. The more data they had, the easier it was to get funding for these hospitals. They have to work really hard to get equal maternal healthcare for women in Kenya.