At Doulaing The Doula we are continuing our quiet revolution of the doula training industry. From the beginning we planned to be a bilingual organization, offering the highest standards in evidence-based, trauma-informed doula education. In the first two months of the idea, we consulted with our community partners, the doulas and community health workers at Roots4Change Cooperative, to ensure our offerings would be culturally appropriate for their communities. Our curriculum allows for faculty to make culturally appropriate adaptations to lesson plans. We promote creativity in the classroom and pay our faculty for their innovations. This means DTD Trainings are themed for people in the Latin and Hispanic communities, they aren’t just translated. Decolonization is one of our key principles, making training and materials available in people’s language and culture is a part of that.

In June 2023, Roots4Change held a Doulaing The Doula Birth Doula Training for their newly hired community health workers. I did many of the presentations in English, which were translated into Spanish by three rotating translators! The six Roots doulas were training assistants. They did all of the learning activities, hands-on positioning practices, and labor simulations. They led the implicit bias discussions and changed the whole postpartum unit to fit their program’s needs. It was a fabulous week. My goal was to never do this again – I wanted them to be doing the training. So I had a side goal of getting them excited about the role and seeing their own capacity to do it. It worked!

Our first faculty who trains doulas in Spanish is Aida Inuca. Aida is a Kichwa Native. She was born and raised in the Andes in Pijal Otavalo, Ecuador. “In my native community, honoring childbirth with great kindness and respect are key principles and traditions.” In our Fall Mentoring Program is Maricela Munguia Martinez, who hails from San Pedro Benito Juarez, Puebla, Mexico. “I am proud to be able to serve my community here as I once did there.”  For more information: https://roots4change.coop/meet-our-doulas/

​​This fall they will hold their first weekly training in Madison, Wisconsin. Next year we plan to have at least two online trainings from the team. They are also willing to travel for in-person trainings. If you would like them to come to your area in 2025, send an email or put it in the website chat!

Our Foundations of Doula Practice and DTD Certification Workbooks have been translated into Spanish; soon we will have the online certification course translated too! In our online certification process, you get feedback with each birth, each book read, and each feedback form submitted. A new doula isn’t alone. As doulas progress, Aida and Maricela will reply and encourage every step of the way.

We hired native translators from Colombia and Ecuador to do the translations; one of them had even been trained as a doula. In other words, we didn’t use AI or Google Translate for anything, we had Latin American women who had given birth choose the language for our translations.

This month debuts El Corazon de La Doula: El Elementos Esenciales Para La Practica y La Vida!

Look for our webpage featuring our Latina culture training programs debuting this fall!