Save the Mothers International
About Us
Save the Mothers is making childbirth safer in the world's most dangerous place
to be a pregnant mother. And this is our story.
Our Why
554 women. Every day. 365 days a year. Every year.
Pregnancy should not be a death sentence.
Today 554 mothers in Sub-saharan Africa died on what should have been one of the happiest days of their lives. There will be no headlines in the news, no marching in the streets, no new legislation passed. But we believe deeply that each of those mothers and their babies matter. Their stories are what motivate us to fight to Save the Mothers.
Our How
Making childbirth safer in the world's most dangerous place to be a pregnant mother.
We accomplish that goal through partnering with the most at-risk communities to provide safe birth training and empower girls through education and a deep understanding of their inherent worth.
Our Progress
Save the Mothers began providing week-long safe birth training programs to the Maasai community in Tanzania in 2021. Our goal has always been to reach communities that are most at risk, often because the village's remote location makes accessing the healthcare system impossible. This lack of access means that mothers deliver babies in mud huts with traditional birthing attendants assisting rather than in sterile hospitals with board certified doctors. As a result, even the simplest delivery complications often result in mothers losing their lives because nobody knows how to save them. Our safe birth seminars equip traditional birthing attendants with knowledge to promote healthy pregnancies, identify problems early, and resolve common complications in order to Save the Mothers.
Tracking progress of the birthing attendants who attended our initial classes once they returned home allowed us to refine the curriculum, gather data, and hear many stories of mothers saved by this knowledge. Though data gathering in these settings is never perfect, we have been shocked by the sharp decline in maternal deaths and the stories of mothers being saved through techniques taught in class.
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We are so grateful for the every life saved so far.
Their stories motivate us to strive toward what is next: more mothers in more countries.
Our Future
The vision of Save the Mothers has always been reaching mothers all over Sub-saharan Africa, which is why we are so excited for our next steps. As we look to the future we are focused on two main priorities to help us achieve our goal of saving moms:
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1. Expanding our footprint to reach more mothers in remote locations around Tanzania, Kenya, and beyond with life-saving safe birth training programs.
2. Empowering young girls through education and a deep understanding of their inherent worth (stay tuned - exciting details coming soon!)
Our Beginning
“I was just sipping my morning coffee. I wasn’t trying to have an idea that would change my life or anyone else’s.” Save the Mothers Founder, Kassie Stanfield, recalls as she reflects on the morning in Spring of 2020 when Save the Mothers was born.
Kassie Stanfield was a certified public accountant (CPA) working in Washington, DC when COVID began shutting down the world in unprecedented ways. A panicked call from her sister over her daycare closing resulted in a cross-country drive and seven weeks in lockdown with her sister, brother-in-law, and ten month old nephew. One evening, Kassie was having a conversation with her sister about a simple complication she faced during labor. Kassie recalls, “All of a sudden I was overwhelmed with the realization that if my sister had been in the communities that we are now working in, she would would have died there. That simple complication would have killed her, as it does many women every day, and my nephew wouldn’t have a mom.”
The next morning, while drinking coffee and doing her Bible study Kassie had the idea that became the basis of what is now Save the Mothers International. The original concept was applying a combat medicine approach to obstetrics. The question became: I wonder what you can do without access to a hospital, a doctor, or any of the equipment you wish you had, in a remote village to save a mother’s life? And the answer turned out to be: there’s a lot that can be done if one person present knows what to do to save her. “The original idea sounded pretty crazy, and I was apprehensive at every step along the way about if it would work. But I got better with time at trusting that this was always God’s project, and I was just along for the ride. I look around now, at this program that is saving lives despite the fact that it was thought up by a CPA and smile at God’s sense of humor,” Kassie says.
Our Board
