Incarcerated Women Receive Doula Services in Beltrami County

By -

L to R: Nate Dorr, Raelene Baker, Erica Gerrity, Jenny Greenleaf, and Emily Lindell

Each woman experiences pregnancy differently. It’s a time of physiological changes and months of anticipation, planning, and preparation. However, for women who are serving time behind bars, it can be a very isolating experience. There is a stigma around women who have been convicted of crimes, and their needs are often overlooked while they are serving a sentence. Luckily, women of the Minnesota Prison Doula Project are here to advocate for and support this underserved population.

The Minnesota Prison Doula Project started in 2008 with a mission to provide pregnancy and parenting support for incarcerated women. Trained doulas provide birth support as well as group-based and individual education to pregnant women and mothers. The goal is to nurture healthy mother-child relationships and increase parenting confidence and skills. Currently the project is operating in seven facilities in Minnesota. They have been working under the University of Minnesota Foundation, but will soon be launching their own independent nonprofit organization called The Ostara Initiative.

NMF granted the Minnesota Prison Doula Project $20,000 to partner with the Beltrami County Jail and Beltrami County Health and Human Services to create pregnancy and parenting education and support for incarcerated women and girls. The program offers weekly individual and group-based learning opportunities that are evidence-informed and have been proven effective with incarcerated mothers in other regions of Minnesota.

Doula Emily Lindell partners with the Prison Doula Project in Beltrami County. She visits the Beltrami County Jail every Monday and Friday with Jenny Greenleaf, a mentor with the Prison Doula Project. On Mondays, Emily and Jenny hold one-on-one meetings with inmates, and on Fridays they lead a small group about parenting. Although they only see two to four inmates at a time, these women show up weekly and look forward to sharing their feelings and experiences with the community they are creating together. “This is a starting point to support women and break the cycle of addiction,” says Jenny. “I don’t think these women realize that we are just as grateful for them as they are for us.” 
Photo courtesy of the Minnesota Prison Doula Project

Every inmate’s experience is unique and complex. Many incarcerated women are victims of their circumstances, which may include abuse, poverty, and addiction. To uplift these women and help create a new path for themselves and their children, it’s important to meet them where they are and provide them with resources and a sense of hope. What happens in the home makes a dramatic impact on the trajectory of a child’s life, and the Minnesota Prison Doula Project believes healthy children who become responsible adults are raised by empowered mothers.

“We are so proud of the work Emily and Jenny are doing with this group at the Beltrami County Jail,” says founder of the Minnesota Prison Doula Project, Erica Gerrity. “We will be directing more resources to their program because their work in this region is so needed.”

For more information or to make a donation to the Minnesota Prison Doula project, follow this link to their website!


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Frank and Marg Marvin

By -
Image
In honor of NMF's upcoming 30th anniversary and National Philanthropy Month, we want to celebrate the contributions of our donors! We will be highlighting a donor a day for the month of November. Please be sure to check the blog often to read about the wonderful stories of giving back to the northwest region.  If you are interested in making a difference through the services of our community foundation, our development officers would be happy to assist you. Please contact Caryl Turnow or Lisa Peterson at 218-759-2057 to learn more. Frank and Marg Marvin, Warroad The year is 1931 and a frustrated Dorrance Johnston has a degree in Engineering with no jobs to be found. Persistent and not willing to give up, he offered to work for a year without pay just to get a foot in the door. This is a mere glimpse at who Margaret “Marg” (Johnston) Marvin’s father was. Marg was born and raised in Warroad, and then met her husband Frank Marvin in their shared hometown. Both of their f
Read more

NMF Working to Address the Region's Child Care Needs

By -
Image
Ensuring families have access to quality child care is a high priority task for NMF. Our region has the third largest deficit for child care needs in the state. We are faced with 41% of families not having access to child care spots for their children. This means 41% of families are struggling to find safe and affordable child care for their children so they can go to work. The Center for Rural Policy and Development recently published a fact sheet that provides insight on this issue. The main barriers that they pointed out were the following: Until more can be done to increase wages and/or profits for both center and family providers, the child care shortage will continue Low pay for workforce makes recruitment and retention a major hurdle. Providers feel they can't raise rates because parents can't afford to pay more. Under this scenario, providers can't make a profit or be sustainable. The high startup costs make for very high barriers to entry for the av
Read more

Peacemaker Resources Paves the Way for Lifelong Learning in the Classroom

By -
Image
(Left to right) Caige Jambor, Sharleen Zeman-Sperle, and Stacy Bender-Fayette, SEL Specialists at Peacemaker Resources, work together to plan the upcoming school year. The mission of  Peacemaker Resources  is to "foster communication, compassion and connection leading to respectful relationships and healthier individuals and communities" and they achieve this by bringing their  social emotional learning  curriculum to elementary and middle schools around the state. They were also a recipient of the  NMF Quality of Place award in 2016 .  What makes their curriculum distinctive?   Barb   Houg, Executive Director, says,  " Its preventative approach, its relevance for children of all ages, and its lifelong impact." The curriculum that Peacemaker Resources is bringing into schools includes a number of programs -  STAR (Students Teaching Attitudes of Respect) ,  Girls Lead ,  Cultural Responsiveness ,  SEL (Social Emotional Learning) ,  Mindfulness , and  Tr
Read more