Seleni collaborates with Birth Queen, Fundación Soymás and The Azadi Project

December 2021 – New York, NY - Seleni is very proud to collaborate with Birth Queen, Fundación Soymás and The Azadi Project by providing specialized trainings in maternal mental health issues. Learn more about each of these wonderful organizations below:

Birth Queen is a New York based organization that provides Black mothers with education and support and trains Black birth workers in the field to tackle the Black maternal health crisis. Seleni offered the Maternal Mental Health Intensive for Teens: PMADs course to help train doulas, midwives, and lactation consultants in their community on maternal mental health.

Fundación Soymás aims to empower and transform teen moms in vulnerable communities into autonomous, responsible and independent moms with a fulfilling life project aligned with their families and their communities. Inspired by the model from @fundacionjuanfe in Colombia and its 20 years of experience, the foundation has been operating for 5 years and it works with teen moms up to 22 years old from the south sector of Santiago de Chile, with a particular focus on helping moms in La Pintana. Seleni supported them by offering our Screening for Perinatal Emotional Distress training to help train their team on maternal mental health.

The @fundacion_soymas team expressed, "Seleni Screening for Perinatal Emotional Distress training scholarship has been a great contribution to our team since it has allowed us to refresh and update our knowledge in regards to the early detection of mood disorders in moms. This is particularly special for us now because currently we are developing a workshop for teen moms and this training will equip us with better tools to screen and identify potential mental health disorders in our community. We’d like to highlight how user-friendly the platform is, the content structure and the clarity of information provided."

The Azadi Project is a Washington, DC based non-profit that supports refugee women in camps all over the world. Instability in Afghanistan is putting the lives of millions of women at risk and creating an influx of Afghan women migrants in Lesvos, Greece. The Azadi Project has been working in Lesvos since 2018, providing refugee women with mental health services to cope with the trauma they have experienced. Since March 2021, Azadi's psychosocial support sessions have improved the lives of 70 women, enabling them to share their stories, build new skills and support one another. Seleni offered its training for free to help train their team for maternal mental health issues to better care for refugee women in their community.

We welcome all mental health professionals (social workers, doulas, midwives, nurses, lactation consultants, students, etc.) working in underserved communities to apply for future rounds: APPLY HERE.

For further information, please contact programs@seleni.org.