Toronto’s First Black Maternal Health Week

Today marks the end of Toronto’s first Black Maternal Health week. Nice.

Last year, Black women came together to organize action and foster progressive conversations to raise awareness about disparities here in Canada. Together, they founded The Black Maternal Health Collective Canada (BMHCC), advocated for legislation to officially recognize the week in Toronto, and brought a series of impactful events to community.

TBHMW 2025 is a spin-off from Black Maternal Health Week in the United States, founded by Black Mamas Matter Alliance in 2018.

This year, the CommUnity Doulas project was invited to share about our work at the incredible launch held in partnership with North York General Hospital.

We were thrilled and honoured to stand alongside our sister service providers doing the work of caring for our community—organizations like:

Abiona Centre: a client-centred infant & early childhood mental health organization providing wraparound supports to young pregnant and parenting people, aged 13-25.

Ancestral Hand Midwives: a Black midwife-led organization serving the Black community by informing and empowering clients during the prenatal, birth, and postpartum periods.

Mino Care: who create access to an integrated community of culturally safe healthcare services and providers, with a commitment to making pregnancy safe and stress-free.

Each of these organizations—and countless individuals—are doing the boots-on-the-ground work of ensuring Black families are getting the support they need during the perinatal period.

It was a week of progressive conversations, inspiration, and affirmation that the work we’re doing not only works—but is critical and deeply valued.

Special thanks to Co-founder and Chair Janelle Ambrose Dash, who transmuted her grief into generative and progressive collaboration, bringing a beautiful vision together in such a short period of time. To physicians Dr. Modupe Tunde-Byass, and Dr. Cindy Maxwell, who always go out of their way to include doulas in the conversation around Black maternal health. And to Althea Jones of Ancestral Hands Midwives, who led the organization of a beautiful community baby shower, invited our project to table at the event, and even sent our expecting Founder & Project Director home with a couple of week’s worth of diapers and goodies.🖤

Here’s to more moments of community, care, and collective joy—because when we show up for each other, beautiful things happen. Congratulations to all involved.🌿