Free storytelling workshops, Congress funding available to midwives and more!

Don't miss out on your chance to apply for The Moth Global Community - Personal Storytelling for midwives & midwife-advocates Virtual Workshops in May 2021. These highly sought after workshops will help you develop personal storytelling skill sets to highlight the life-saving, life-promoting impact of midwives worldwide.

STAND UP AND BE COUNTED — CLICK HERE TO APPLY BEFORE APRIL 5

Through its Global Community Program, The Moth works closely with individuals around the world (including Melinda Gates and Amanda Gorman) - elevating stories that highlight world issues, dissolve stereotypes, and bridge social divides.

ICM invites you to apply for funding for the 32nd ICM Triennial Virtual Congress to be held in June 2021. This year's Congress will be the largest virtual gathering of midwives in history and we want to ensure that as many midwives as possible can attend the event and benefit from the professional development opportunities that the Congress will offer.

CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT IF YOU ARE ELIGIBLE FOR FUNDING

What is the State of the World's Midwifery (SoWMy) 2021 report? Find out at the 32nd ICM Virtual Triennial Congress.

Improving maternal and?newborn?health was one of the Millennium Development Goals’ unfinished agendas, and it has remained a high priority of the Sustainable Development Goals era. At ICM we have always known that midwives are the solution to achieving a substantial reduction in maternal and neonatal mortality and stillbirths. However, to realise this potential, midwives need to have the recommended skills and competencies, be the decision makers of their own profession, and work in an enabling environment.

The State of the World’s Midwifery (SoWMy)?2021 report will launch shortly before ICM’s Virtual Triennial Congress on International Day of the Midwife (5th May). It will underscore the case for?investment in midwives and provide an updated evidence base and detailed analysis of the current progress and future challenges to deliver effective coverage and quality of midwives and midwifery services. That’s why ICM will open its 2021 Virtual Triennial Congress with a plenary session on SoWMy, exploring key findings within the report, and convening leaders from the?SoWMy?authoring organisations,?decision-makers and midwives. Panelists will discuss the investment case for midwives?in light of?these new findings in order to strengthen midwifery and improve maternal and?newborn?healthcare. Stay tuned for more information on our panelists.

We’re getting ready for ICM’s VTC. Are you? Share it on social>>

Follow the data, invest in midwives – this is the theme of the 2021 International Day of the Midwife, and it is through this lens that ICM will lead the ongoing and growing efforts to centre midwives as fundamental to ending preventable maternal and newborn death and achieving SDG 3.1 (reduce the global maternal mortality ratio to less than 70 per 100 000 live births by 2030).

This year's IDM will also coincide with the launch of the State of the World's Midwifery Report — an updated evidence base and detailed analysis of the midwifery workforce across the globe. The report will be leveraged by ICM and its global and regional partners as well as midwives' association to stimulate policy dialogue and inform policy change. With these goals in mind, this year's IDM represents a pivotal opportunity to ensure SoWMy and other evidence on the impact of midwives is clearly communicated and widely circulated amongst global and national decision-makers.

Here’s what we’re doing at the ICM Head Office to ensure you have the resources and support to celebrate IDM and the life-saving work of midwives:

IDM Regional Parties – On May 5, ICM and its Board Members will host six regional Zoom parties to provide ICM Midwives’ Associations with the opportunity to connect with colleagues and celebrate the profession. If you’re an ICM MA, you’ll receive an invitation to the meeting in your respect region within the next couple of weeks.
IDM Toolkit – stay tuned for the IDM toolkit which will arrive in your inboxes soon! This toolkit will provide midwives and midwife advocates with the resources they need to amplify the investment case for midwives.
Dedicated SoWMy Microsite – we’re working with our partners at UNFPA to create a microsite for the State of the World’s Midwifery report – this digital platform will our global community with shareable facts and data to ensure SoWMy is easily understood and accessible to a wide range of audiences, including ministries of health and other regional decision makers.

CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT #IDM2021

We are back with another monthly advocacy spotlight where we highlight a key concept from ICM’s Advocacy Toolkit for Midwives. This month, we’re focusing on the importance of understanding your audience.

Another key aspect of framing your advocacy and achieving your objectives is deciding both your audience and your subject. Who are you advocating to? Who are you advocating for?

Your audience is the people you need to persuade that your issue is important. This might include, but not be limited to:

Women
Families
Community leaders
Other midwives
Policy-makers
Academics/Researchers
Doctors and nurses
Media

Advocacy begins to succeed when audiences are inspired to act. Advocating to people or groups can be challenging because everybody has different priorities and will not all be inspired by the same arguments. To motivate our audience, we must try to imagine the situation from their perspectives and ask ourselves what will motivate our audience.

CLICK HERE TO ACCESS THE ICM ADVOCACY TOOLKIT

More than 550 midwives and midwife advocates from around the world have submitted entries to our Midwives in Focus photo contest - a joint initiative from ICM, Jhpiego, UNFPA and MOMENTUM. We look forward to announcing the five grand prize winners of the contest at the ICM 23nd Virtual Triennial Congress in March. Until then, stay tuned to our social channels for sneak previews of select contest entries.

CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE PHOTO CONTEST

Every month, our Board prepares a briefer to keep our global midwife community informed about its activities and the strategic direction of ICM. This month's briefer was prepared by ICM Vice President, Sandra Oyarzo Torres and Treasurer, Vitor Varela.

CLICK HERE TO ACCESS THE BOARD BRIEFER

Our new three-year strategy aims to ‘position ICM as an expert in creating, advising, influencing, and enabling the profession of midwifery globally’. This strategy is ambitious and demands a concerted effort, because if we all contribute, we can make it happen! The ICM Head Office and the ICM Board are each undertaking a synchronised reform process to better position ICM to realise our ambitions. The Board is working on the following aspects of our governance:

Align the ICM Constitution and Governance policies to ensure these are easier to understand and better aligned with modern governance.
Reformulating Board roles and responsibilities to support a competency based Board in all aspects of governance, including financial governance to better support the Board to lead our Regional processes in ICM’s six Regions.
Be transparently and compassionately accountable to Council.

We Look forward to regularly sharing the developments via the newsletter with you during this triennium.