ICTC Founder Shafia Monroe

ICTC founder Shafia M. Monroe, the founder and Board President of ICTC, is a 20-year midwife veteran, certified by the Massachusetts Midwives Alliance, a trade organization. Monroe was trained by midwives from Ghana, Zaire and Alabama during the 1970s. She earned her B.A. in Sociology (with a concentration in Medical Sociology) from the University of Massachusetts, and has received numerous awards including the Martin Luther King Jr. Merit Award from the Skanner Foundation in Portland, OR (1994), the Outstanding Contributions Award from Massachusetts's Department of Public Health, and the Outstanding Leadership Award from Better Births, Boston, Massachusetts (1991). Though born in Boston, Massachusetts, she recognizes her Alabama roots and practices the Southern style of healing, using the laying on of hands, herbs and prayer for pregnant women and newborns.

As early as seven years of age Shafia realized she had been called to be a healer. At eighteen years old she became involved with the midwifery home birth movement and witnessed the under-representation of women of African descent as midwives. This was the beginning of Shafia's organized outreach efforts, not only to recruit and train African descent midwives as a method of reducing infant mortality, but also to encourage women to consider home birth and midwifery services as a tool for empowerment.

Monroe formed the Traditional Childbearing Group in 1976, in part because of the need for better health within Boston's Black community, but also because White women dominated the field and opportunities for aspiring Black midwives were few and far-between. Monroe was profiled in the book " Granny Midwives and Black Woman Authors" for her ground breaking work in training African American midwives in Boston, Massachusetts, her hometown.

Monroe's African spiritual and ritual-based practice was also chronicled in a photographic essay in the Boston Globe before her move to Portland in the early 1990s. For over twenty years, Shafia has successfully reached out to Black women from every walk of life and has served as a midwife for thousands of women. Shafia has conducted countless childbirth classes, breastfeeding promotion classes, parenting classes and worked on legislation with others to help bring the services of midwives to all women.

Along with the Creator's blessing, she attributes her success to incorporating African and Southern outreach traditions. The cornerstone of Shafia's philosophy for increasing the numbers of Black midwives and helping to reduce infant mortality is to reach out to the hearts and minds of the Black community.

 

Contact ICTC

International Center for Traditional Childbearing
2823 N. Portland Blvd.
Portland, Oregon 97217
Phone: 503-460-9324
Email ICTC: ictc@comcast.net
Email Shafia Monroe: sistahmidwife@msn.com

 

This website is a donated by Lighthouse Office Virtual Enterprises