The NYC Doula Initiative — wait, WHAT?

A few years ago I had a phone call with a Black founder, someone I connected with through social media and took a great liking to over the years. On this particular call, this founder shared that she was in a group with other Black female founders and that one of the founders had been approached by a white-led organization or business of some kind about creating a Doula directory. They asked the founder to assist them with recruiting Black and Brown Doulas to participate in this new Doula directory. The founder let this white-led organization (who were hoping to invest and capitalize off of the business of being Black/Brown in America) know that there were people ALREADY doing this work and that they needed to reach out to one of us. The Arch was a suggestion. The founder informed this white-led org/business that if they tried to go around us (which they implied), when the work was already being done AND they were already being made aware, that they would regret it (this Founder had connections in the publication world and would utilize their power to put the word out about these shady tactics). After that phone call, I didn’t hear much about it and never saw this proposed “Doula Directory”. This was in 2020. Over the years I have seen many different Doula directories, some of them created by Doulas and others created by people outside of the field, whose intentions, in my opinion, are to capitalize on the “popularity” of the work that we do.

The thing about birth work is it can seem like we all have the same common goal, and that in short, is to support families. However, every so often, our profession is met with opportunities for people, organizations and businesses to align with other entities (like the government), and it can feel like those who choose to align with these places are serving their own self-interests and it never quite turns out right. In recent years, I have had the opportunity to be a part of some of these conversations ie. The Medicaid Doula Pilot Program (which was presented in NYS twice — and to my knowledge, was a failure) and have also been asked to share The Arch and what we do with some of the city’s bigger organizations, in the hopes that we could leverage what we do as a tool to support families. Yet, what I see coming up over and over again is organizations having these conversations, speaking on behalf of the vast Doula community, that never really benefit the greater good. Yes, we know that Doulas are beneficial in a number of ways, and yes, Doulas have a huge impact on birthing outcomes and…