Elaine Welteroth‘s BirthFUND program has raised a total of more than $1.2 million per recent reports.
The organization was launched earlier this year to help curb maternal mortality rates by creating a pool of vetted midwifery care providers and linking them with expecting parents along with grants to help offset costs incurred during the birthing process.
“We are all sick and tired of hearing these sad stories,” Welteroth said at a birthFUND event with TIME CMO Sadé Muhammad titled “A New Movement for Maternal Health” that rounded out Black Maternal Health Week as reported by ESSENCE. “And so we’re not here today to fearmonger or regurgitate the sad stories. We know the statistics, we know that they’re grim, and we know that the world is full of enough bad news. What we’re here to do is really change the stats into a call to action. We need to stop being shocked and we need to figure out how we can lift up the solutions that are going to change this. And one of those solutions is midwifery.”
The fund boasts a slew of notable figures including Serena Williams and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, John Legend, Chrissy Teigen, Kelly Rowland, Ashley Graham and Karlie Kloss.
““One of our advisors, Charles Johnson, who tragically lost his beautiful wife Kira after a routine C-section at Cedars-Sinai hospital, has set an ambitious goal of getting America to zero preventable maternal mortality rate by the year 2030,” Welteroth said per an AfroTech report. “BirthFUND is working alongside him and a number of partners to help make that reality possible.”