Welcome to the first episode of Season 3 of the Optimistic Voices podcast of Helping Children Worldwide.
We help children worldwide by strengthening and Empowering Families and communities. This podcast is for people interested in deep conversations with thought leaders in the field of child welfare, global health and international missions to the global South.
Our special host for this episode is Kathleen Pfohl, the maternal health mission graduate intern with Helping Children Worldwide., along with guests Josephine Garnem, Executive Director of Healy International Relief Foundation and Dr. Mariama Massaquoi, co-founder of Tenki for Born, which she runs together with her siblings as a way for members of the diaspora to recognize and give back to the communities where their families and ancestors were born. Dr. Masaquoi is a family medicine doctor based in Virginia. Mariama, and a guest on a prior episode of Optimistic Voices, where she discussed the Mission of Tenki for Born. Tenki for Born is dedicated to alleviating maternal mortality. Helping Children Worldwide, Healy International and Tenki are members of Together for Global Health, a professional Network convened by Helping Children Worldwide and managed by Yasmine Vaughan, Helping Children Worldwide's Technical Advisor for Global Health and Missions.
During January 2024, the together for Global health network members are hosting a maternal health conference in Sierra Leone, West Africa, training midwives and nurses and focused on creating a cadre of well-trained practitioners who can train others locally in order to sustain the educational impact of the conference, improve continuity of care and capacity of local providers.
The training builds on training provided by CHASL in 2023 and is the first collaboration of a long term plan for training missions to Sierra Leone to bring the educational efforts to every community and region in the country.
The conference outcomes will inform future collaborative endeavors, through monitoring, evaluation and collaborative research on long term impacts of the training.
Helpingchildrenworldwide.org