Muneera generously offered to write a guestblog about her experiences with the ICTC doula training.
About Muneera: Muneera Fontaine is a wife, busy mother of two, doctoral student at ICDL Grad School, Infant Special Educator, and Full Circle Provisional Doula. She should be writing a research paper instead of this blog post but saving our babies can’t wait…and the research can. When not juggling all the different hats she wears, she can be found at Doulas of Color or curled up with a good book and some herbal tea!
I offered to do a guest blog for Radical Doula on my doula training with the International Center for Traditional Childbearing (ICTC). For the record I do not work for ICTC and I have no personal gain by writing this blog. I just felt compelled to let others know about this amazing training that I was able to take that really changed my life. I am going to try and keep it short and simple because I could go on and on about most any topic related to birth. 
I initially wanted to become a doula because of my own personal experience with having my first son by Un-necesearian ( a whole other blog post!) and then my daughter eight years later by a midwife in a birthing center. The difference in support and control that I felt were unmeasurable. It was then that I realized that I wanted every woman to be able to claim that as their own. I felt that every woman deserved to feel the empowerment of visualizing and achieving the birth where she was an active participant. In particular as women of color, I felt that we are already so dis-empowered on a regular basis that we come to expect it. My personal observation was that we are less informed because we are often not given the same amount of information as others. You cannot have power without choice and you cannot have choice without information. And ICTC definitely sends you home with lots and lots of information!
There are five main topics that I think are distinct to the ICTC doula philosophy which was developed from a traditional midwifery model of care. That means they strive to be community based, and work to “empower families to improve birth outcomes, breastfeeding rates, and reduce premature birth” (Shafia Monroe, African American Infant Mortality), especially in communities of African-American women and other women of color. We have the worst infant mortality statistics here in the United States and the goal is to change that from within our own communities.
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Posted by radicaldoula 
