Mamantin (Mother-Child) Program

The Mamantin Program (Mother-Child program) aims to provide basic safe tools to pregnant and new mothers to care for themselves and their newborns, together with reclaiming the Celebration of Motherhood especially in rural territories where public health campaigns and strategies have focused to explain motherhood as a stage of risk and birth as a matters of just "surviving". We believe birth is much more than that, where maternal deaths can be prevented with loving and adequate continuous care thru the woman-mother life cycle. The training of new professional midwives which not adhere to the biomedical model of care is key on making possible this vision.

We are still way behind in accomplishing this given the politics in Peru around birth and independent midwifery which can sustain the midwifery model of care - with an intercultural approach as needed in the Andes where Andean midwifery has been part and is still, at a lesser or greater degree, part of the embodied wisdom Andean women have in Peru. More than 90% of birth assistance in Peru is given by a doctor (60.2%) or an obstetra (a professional biomedical midwife) (28%) both trained in the biomedical model of care, with a high rate of unnecessary interventionism and obstetric violence to the women they serve, deemed as "uneducated" by the medical system. There are no midwifery education training centers which adhere to the more respectful and appropriate midwifery model for low-risk births (the majority) so our dream is that aspiring Peruvian midwives can receive this training abroad and then come back to Peru to assist births in this loving & safe model of care. With enthusiast Peruvian midwives properly trained in the midwifery model of care, the next step of dreaming a local intercultural midwifery training center may be possible.

Thus, Hampi Warmi's strategy for this new program is to: 1) keep providing education on maternal and newborn health, with a woman-centered and intercultural approach; 2) keep providing education around reproductive & cultural rights around birth; 3) promoting and revitalizing Andean midwifery wisdom from within rural communities - with the backing of the validity of the midwifery model of care and its safety; 4) supporting and promoting independent birth centers initiatives in Peru; 5) promoting the gestating of independent Peruvian professional midwives (parteras profesionales) in the country and dreaming the best avenues to receiving this training in independent midwifery schools abroad (South America/ North America); and 6) promoting the Remembering of the Celebration of Motherhood, especially in Andean rural communities, through the revitalization of Ceremony & Ritual for new mothers and the collective co-creation of "new" rituals and other ways of motherly celebration (eg photography community project, birth storytelling sacred circles).

A transversal strategy is to broaden the awareness of the diversity of ways of mothering with love and visibilizing these love-mothering manifestations and honor them (eg mothers with low milk supply who feed their babies through breastfeeding and by supplementing).