Doulas

Community Aware Birthworker (CAB), founded in 2020 by experienced doulas Rhonda and Heather Christine, is a Minnesota state-recognized Doula Certifying Organization based in Hopkins. Since inception, CAB has trained 155 doulas across 17 cohorts, with 98% completing doula training and 31 completing full certification. Rhonda and Heather Christine continue to be full-time birthworkers, educators, and birth community advocates. CAB has built its reputation on an unwavering commitment to equity-centered training that explicitly addresses bias, racism, and discrimination in healthcare settings. CAB’s curriculum equips doulas with essential skills including birth support fundamentals, comfort and coping strategies, prenatal through postpartum care, advocacy and ethics, childbirth and lactation education, and doula business practices. Critically, CAB’s training prepares doulas not just to attend births, but to be advocates who recognize and challenge inequitable treatment that BIPOC families and LGBTQIA+ individuals may face in healthcare settings.

The Ostara Initiative is a women-founded and women-led, hybrid, non-profit organization based in Minnesota and Alabama. They believe in solutions rather than problems or people management. The organization searches for solutions in the soil, seed, and root of its communities, government, and institutions. The Ostara Initiative’s work challenges the ​destructive tendencies of for-profit prisons and related businesses as well as the chasm between the carceral state and community-based support.