Sometimes You Just Have to Crash a Birth

One of the hardest parts of my first year as a AmeriCorps VISTA was not being able to see the people I was serving. When you spend most of your days cramped up in an office it is hard to see the effect you made on individuals.

It’s one of the problems many of the students I work with have as well when they are put in capacity building volunteer positions. Even though the marketing plan they’ve created might have a big effect on the homeless population of Augusta County, the service project never seems meaningful until they get a chance to interact with the people they are serving. Our students crave direct contact, and they aren’t the only ones.

Kathryn Trujillo-Hall is the founder of the Birthing Project, a nonprofit that improves birth outcomes by pairing young mothers with volunteers to help them through their pregnancy. Kathryn, more commonly known as “Mama Kat” has been recognized as a CNN Hero and an Asoka Fellow for her innovative solution to the high infant mortality rate among African-American women.

Of course being the founder of an innovative organization is not all glitz and glamour. Much of Mama Kat’s time is spent fundraising, going to speaking engagements, writing grant proposals, attending meetings. They’re all important things that keep her organization going strong but those things also wear people down.

So what does she do when the long nights and tough work get her down? Simple: she crashes a birth.

Unannounced, Mama Kat will pop in for the birth of one of the women the Birthing Project serves. ”Infant Mortality means dead babies,” Mama Kat said when I met her at a retreat last month. The problem she fights every day is so big, so tragic, that it is nice every once and a while to see a success. It is nice to step away from the proposals and meetings and get back to the meaning of it all. She is giving a young chid a good life and she is reminded of that when she sees a tiny head emerge from the womb. That incredible act of the beginning of life is why she founded the Birthing Project. Crashing births reminds her of why she is here and why the work has to be done.

Every once in a while we all need to crash a birth. One VISTA I met worked on gang prevention policy and didn’t get much interaction with the youth his work was directly effecting so he decided to become a mentor. In the long run the policy might effect more children’s lives then the one child he was matched with but with mentoring he got to see the direct effect of his actions.

In my first year as a VISTA my most treasured moments were on site visits when I got to see the direct impact of my service at Learn and Serve – Michigan. I still fondly tell the story of a kid who insisted that if his school was going to plant a garden they better use organic seeds. He reminded me of the power service-learning had to show kids the impact they can have on their community. On another site visit I got to milk a goat on a farm ran by a school in the middle of Detroit. It reminded me that I was working to unlock the potential schools have to be the center of change in their communities. Those moments energized my service.

It’s easy to burnout when you don’t get to see the direct result of your work. Take sometime to crash a birth, whatever that may mean to you. You might go on a site visit, you might look at pictures of the people you organization serves every day, you might participate in a service project instead of organizing it. Take time to do whatever you need to do to see the result your work has on individuals. Whatever you need to do to see beyond the numbers and figures you use to mark your success and see the smiles and faces that prove you’ve done something great. Sometimes you just have to crash a birth to revitalize your commitment to service.

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