In the spring of 2016, a group of doulas, midwives, midwives in training, childbirth educators and passionate birth advocates met in the living room of one their homes to talk about how we could better serve our community by building a network of professionals in pregnancy, birth, and postpartum. From that seed grew the launch of our first annual Labor Day Event in September 2016. There were many collaborative meetings discussing mission, vision, and what our 5 and 10 year goals were for a collective. The immediate need, the one we still serve, is creating a space for the island community to access resources and professionals to help them through the journey of pregnancy, birth and post-partum. Our other main goal is to provide networking & educational opportunities to the professionals providing services to the community. 

Every year we have held an annual Labor Day Event celebrating our successes as a community and requesting feedback, insight and volunteers to keep us going. In 2020, the Annual Labor Day Event looks a bit different due to COVID. See our Past Events & Projects section on our website.

The Pacific Birth Collective is operated as an LLC with grants coming in to help fund some of our programs through a non-profit fiscal sponsor. We are currently applying for non-profit status. We have a Volunteer Council which runs the operations and programs and a couple very part-time positions through grants. We are volunteer-led and driven by passionate people who are making supporting their community in pregnancy, birth, and postpartum their life's work. However, we are volunteers, and lead full lives working, parenting, and the like. This means that at times, we are more responsive than other times, depending on how many volunteers we have and how engaged they are.

The original founders of the Pacific Birth Collective are pictured below. Some members have left the island, either temporarily or until further notice, while some are here but have moved on to other projects or ventures. We are currently restructuring to have a director position and board of directors while keeping the Volunteer Council & Professional Members. See our section on Who We Are Now for a current list of those serving on the Volunteer Council.

The original founders of the Pacific Birth Collective September 2016

Mariah Strong, Mackenzie Eason, Kristina Statler, Kathe Gibbs, Sonya Niess, Kiana Rowley