Motherhood should mark a beginning, not an end.
On 11 November, kick start your day by joining the Aminata Maternal Foundation (AMF) community and walk 12km from the Sydney Opera House Stairs to Watsons Bay, and raise funds to improve the lives of women and babies in Sierra Leone.
The 2023 AMF Walking Challenge seeks to raise money to improve maternal health in Sierra Leone, where mothers face one of the highest lifetime risks of maternal death in the world.
The lifetime risk of dying while having a baby in Sierra Leone is one in seventeen. That is about 500 times more dangerous than having a baby in Australia, where the same figure is 1 in 8,700. Sierra Leone has been ranked third lowest in terms of the Mothers’ Index, which assesses the well-being of mothers and children.
The 2023 AMF Walking Challenge is inspired by the story of Zainab, who was in labour for three days and walked 109km to access urgent medical care. Her experience was marked by a lack of access to healthcare and financial resources, and led to the devasting loss of her baby and a fistula formation. She found hope and healing through successful fistula surgery at the Aberdeen Women’s Centre. You can watch Zainab’s full story by clicking here.
This year, the 2023 AMF Walking Challenge aims to raise $65,000 for the salary and training of 17 midwives for one year. Sierra Leone is experiencing a critical shortage of midwives due to more than a decade of civil war, Ebola and more recently, COVID-19. They have lost 15% of their medical workforce. Currently, Sierra Leone has less than 500 midwives but needs 3,700 midwives to make safe childbirth a possibility.
Making birth safe now and in the future deeply relies on skilled midwives. They are the foundation of safe childbirth. Without safe childbirth, the future is uncertain.
Sign up to walk to end infant and maternal mortality in Sierra Leone.
If you are unable to walk, please help AMF reach their goal to fund the salary of 17 midwives for one year, by donating.
- $30 could provide five children with a health check-up
- $50 could prevent birthing injuries
- $309 could contribute to one month’s salary of a midwife