B!RTH Charity Partners
Freedom From Fistula
They aim to help eradicate obstetric fistula and for women and girls in Africa to have access to healthcare during pregnancy and childbirth, with a focus on training local medical professionals and financing access to healthcare during pregnancy and labour.
Tommy’s
Tommy’s funds research into pregnancy problems and provides information to empower parents to have a healthy pregnancy. Their money is invested in research that aims to find out why pregnancy can go wrong and how to stop that from happening.
Operation Fistula
Operation Fistula is an international charitable effort that focuses on revolutionizing fistula care for women, believing that all money spent on fistula should deliver the most effective results possible.
Born Safe Global & Make It Zero (Through Lifebox)
Lifebox provides education, training, peer support, and equipment to areas with limited resources. It has a specific branch (Born Safe) that focuses on enabling women to survive childbirth and preventing them from being put at risk for surgical complications and infections. Make It Zero is women-focused, advocating for safe surgery specifically for women.
Forward UK
Forward UK focuses on three main issues: female genital mutilation, child marriage and obstetric fistula. Forward has been working to end obstetric fistula in Africa since 2002 through research, access to treatment, maternal health services, social re-integration and rehabilitation.
Adoption UK
They are the leading charity providing support, awareness and understanding for those parenting or supporting children who cannot live with their birth parents. As we’ve invited an adoptive mother to take part in the engagement work, this would be a good charity to include, as well as acknowledging that motherhood doesn’t always come in the form of giving birth to a child.
FASD Trust
The FASD Trust, founded in 2007 by Simon and Julia Brown, is the UK's leading charity providing support for all those affected by FASD, training / information for the professionals and seeking to end alcohol use in pregnancy. The FASD Trust runs support groups for those affected by FASD across the UK, hosts various professional forums and has a variety of training and other resources for those affected by or interested in FASD.
National Childbirth Trust
A charity to support parents by giving them ‘accurate, impartial’ information to decide what’s best for their family It supports families during pregnancy, birth and early parenthood, campaigns for improved maternity care and aims to ensure that every parent has the chance to make improved choices through full access to their services and activities.
Birthrights
Birthrights describes itself as “the UK’s only organisation dedicated to improving women’s experience of pregnancy and childbirth by promoting respect for human rights. [They] believe that all women are entitled to respectful maternity care that protects their fundamental rights to dignity, autonomy, privacy and equality.”
SANDS
Sands is the stillbirth and neonatal death charity. They operate throughout the UK, supporting anyone affected by the death of a baby, working to improve the care bereaved parents receive, and promoting research to reduce the loss of babies’ lives.
Wellbeing of Women
Wellbeing of Women is the charity dedicated to improving the health of women and babies across the UK.Every year they invest in special research projects and allocate funds towards the training of specialist doctors and midwives.
Health Poverty Action
Health Poverty Action is a charity that focuses on strengthening poor and marginalised people in their ‘struggle for health’. Their March for Mothers is a UK wide awareness-raising walk for mothers in the world’s poorest communities
Twins & Multiple Birth Association
TAMBA is a leading charity in the UK for people expecting twins or triplets, offering advice, campaigning to improve health and developmental outcomes, funding clinical research to reduce the risks faced during pregnancy, labour and after birth, and providing practical support for families.
The Multiple Birth Foundation
A national and international charity that employs healthcare professionals, dedicated to supporting multiple birth families and educates and advises professionals about their special needs. They also provide free (though a donation is suggested) prenatal classes in London for parents expecting multiple births.
Prompt Maternity Foundation
The PROMPT Maternity Foundation (PMF) is a multi-professional group of obstetricians, midwives and anaesthetists who are all employed within the NHS at hospitals in the South West of England. The aim of the charity is to reduce preventable harm to mothers and their babies by improving awareness and facilitating the distribution of effective obstetric emergencies training to areas of the world seeking access to an economical and sustainable training model.
Maternity Action
A legal-based charity that aims to end inequality and improve the health and well-being of pregnant women, partners and young children, Maternity Action offers advice and information to parents, employers and healthcare professionals. The particular interest for B!RTH is their work supporting refugees and asylum seekers, regardless of their legal status.
Kicks Count
Kicks Count is a small charity that aims to lower the UK’s stillbirth and neonatal death rate with a focussed campaign to raise awareness of the baby’s movements in pregnancy. They produce information, leaflets and products to help the mother keep track of the baby’s movements during the third trimester. A similar campaign in Norway saw the stillbirth rates drop by a third.
Baby Lifeline
Baby Lifeline supports the care of pregnant women and newborn babies all over the UK and worldwide, raising funds to purchase much needed maternity equipment. It is one of the leading providers of training to the medical and legal professions. Judi Dench is one of their patrons.
Aching Arms and Life After Loss
Two relatively small baby loss charities that focus on providing support and information to those who have lost their baby during pregnancy or soon after birth.
Life For African Mothers
Life For African Mothers aims to make birth safer in Sub-Saharan Africa by providing medication to treat eclampsia and post-partum haemorrhage. They also facilitate midwifery training programmes in several countries to help train and update qualified midwives to enhance their clinical skills.
Maternal & Childbirth Advocacy International
MCAI aims to improve the lives of babies, children and pregnant women in areas of extreme poverty, by empowering and enabling their in-country partners to strengthen emergency healthcare. They strengthen existing health systems in the countries they work in, by providing training for local healthcare professionals, developing and distributing free medical teaching materials and advocating with governments to renovate hospitals and improve medical equipment.
Mothers of Africa
A charity that works through Cardiff University, Mothers of Africa trains medical staff in Sub-Saharan Africa to care for mothers during pregnancy and childbirth.
We Are Chasing Zero
A charity that aims to reduce the number of children born with HIV to 0, We Are Chasing Zero has a fundraiser called Pregnancy Twinning. For £40 you can support a woman in Malawi through her pregnancy, including transport to a health clinic for antenatal check-ups, pregnancy advice and emotional support from a local Mother Buddy, the opportunity to give birth at a clinic rather than at home and six months of postnatal visits.
Care International
CARE’s maternal health work helps women affected by conflict or disaster access the healthcare they need, as well as supporting women in poor communities in accessing high quality maternal health services (through GlaxoSmithKline!) They also work with community leaders, women and health workers to understand and address the reasons for the high maternal death rate.
Maternity Worldwide
Maternity Worldwide helps women and girls in developing countries to access the high quality maternal healthcare they need, by working in partnership with local healthcare providers, government and NGOs to fulfil an unmet need in a sustainable way. This includes educating women on maternal health and encouraging them to become financially independent, improving access to and providing equipment for health centres and hospitals, and training local healthcare workers to provide safe births.
Médecins Sans Frontières
MSF works with midwives and birth attendants to establish programmes so complicated births can be identified quickly to help prevent maternal deaths. They work with pregnant women to provide delivery services, emergency obstetric care and post-delivery consultations.
Oxfam
Oxfam works to bring people out of poverty and states that free quality health care and education services are vital to the fight against poverty, providing poor people with the foundations for a brighter future. This includes supporting local communities in providing access to healthcare for mothers and babies.
Save The Children
EVERY ONE is Save the Children’s biggest ever global campaign to make stopping children and mothers dying a political priority. What drives the campaign is their vision that no child under the age of five will die from preventable causes and public attitudes will not tolerate a return to high levels of child deaths. The overall aim for the campaign is to have helped achieve Millennium Development Goal 4 on new-born and child survival. This means also addressing the health and wellbeing of mothers and accelerating progress towards Millennium Development Goal 5.
UNICEF
Part of Unicef's aim to help children globally is its work with governments and partners to assist in the development of home-based maternal and newborn care programmes based on successful models of CHWs, and/or community women’s groups, while strengthening health facilities and the referral linkages between communities and hospitals providing emergency care.
WaterAidDeliverLife Campaign
The WaterAid 'Deliver Life' Campaign aims to reach 130,000 new mothers and their children by providing them with clean water and a hygienic place to give birth.
White Ribbon Alliance
White Ribbon Alliance is a global network of maternal health advocates campaigning for more resources and the right policies to prevent the deaths of women and newborns, while holding governments and politicians to account for their promises of action WRA campaign to demand the right for "safe birth for every woman, everywhere". They are less of a direct, on-the-ground charity, but lead campaigns worldwide to address the issues of safe motherhood.
Women And Children First
Women and Children First is an international development organisation to reduce maternal mortality rates. They work primarily through women’s groups in rural communities in the poorest parts of Africa and Asia to improve maternal, newborn and child health. They empower women to find their own solutions to their most important health problems and, through the women's groups, reach the wider community. They also work with partners to improve the quality of care in health facilities.
Women For Refugee Women
Women For Refugee Women works to challenge the injustices faced by refugee women and women seeking asylum, by working directly with women to support and empower them, working with arts & media to tell women’s stories, and publishing research to try to create a fairer asylum process.
Refugee Action
Refugee Action is a more general charity to support all refugees in the UK, not specifically women, to get them basic support and build safe, productive lives here.
Refugee Council
The Refugee Council is one of the leading charities in the UK working directly with refugees, and supporting them to rebuild their lives. We also speak up for refugees using our direct work as an evidence base, and ensure refugees have a stronger and more influential voice in decisions that will affect them. We work with a range of partners and in collaboration to ensure we can best support our clients.
MedSin
Medsin is a student network and registered charity tackling global and local health inequalities through education, advocacy and community action. They have a vision of ‘a fair and just world in which equity in health is a reality for all’ and believe that the students of today are critical to bringing about an equitable and healthy world of tomorrow.
MedAct
Medact educates, analyses and campaigns for global health on issues related to conflict, poverty and the environment. They aim to mobilise the health community to support policy change and shift public attitudes.
Exploring Global Health Opportunities
EGHO is a registered charity based in the UK, committed to the development and maintenance of relieving sickness, preserving health and advancing health and social education. EGHO works primarily to benefit the people of Kenya by working directly with healthcare providers to identify the areas where we can maximise our efforts. Within the UK, the charity works hard to raise the level of awareness with regards to health inequalities in the developing world.
Manchester Global Health Foundation
This isn’t up and running yet, but Manchester University is setting up a new charitable body to facilitate philanthropic contributions to global health projects.
Volunteer Services International
VSO places committed volunteers with carefully selected organisations so their skills generate the greatest value, bringing people together to fight poverty. This involves training education professionals and health workers on the front line and providing health care to millions.
Population Matters
Population Matters is a membership charity that addresses population size and environmental sustainability. They believe population growth contributes to environmental degradation, resource depletion and other problems. They conduct research, inform the public and advocate improved family planning and sex education, women’s empowerment, smaller families and moderate consumption.