WASHINGTON (January 17, 2007)—Four community outreach programs were awarded grants from Lamaze International, three for $500 and one for $1,000. Recipients were chosen from North Carolina, Kentucky, Wisconsin and New York out of eight applicants.

The Community-Based Outreach Grants Initiative, formed in 2004 by Lamaze International, is designed to support organizations or individuals who have developed programs that ensure childbearing families in underserved populations have access to information and education about the health and safety benefits of normal birth. The initiative supports Lamaze International’s priority to make childbirth education available to all women, regardless of income, location or ethnicity.

This year’s chosen recipients will use the money in various ways:

• Hands Reaching Out Door County Teen Parent Mentor Program of Sturgeon Bay, Wis., will use its $500 grant to fund a mentor program that links experienced mothers to new teen moms to assist with parenting skills, breastfeeding help and emotional support. The mentor helps the teenage mom seek early and regular prenatal care and establish a birth plan to assure a positive personal experience, along with providing continuous support during labor and birth.

• The Duke AHEC Lamaze Childbirth Educator Program was awarded $1,000 to train Latino and/or bilingual women as childbirth educators to cater to the growing population of Spanish-speaking expectant mothers in North Carolina. Having an instructor who can understand their cultural birth traditions and communicate to them in their native tongue will better prepare Latino women for pregnancy, birth, breastfeeding and infant care.

• Expectant parents of multiples in Louisville, Ky., will benefit from the $500 grant to the Louisville Mothers of Twins Club. More money means more outreach of the organization’s birth and labor classes, which educate women in the earlier part of their pregnancies on preterm labor signs and action steps.

• A recipient of a Community-Based Outreach Grant the past two years, Jacqueline Levine of East Rockaway, NY, was chosen again. She will spend her $500 grant providing one-on-one breastfeeding support to women in her Lamaze childbirth education classes. Levine would also like to work at introducing Lamaze into local high school curriculum.

Since its founding in 1960, Lamaze International has worked to promote, support and protect normal birth through education and advocacy through the dedicated efforts of professional childbirth educators, providers and parents. An international organization with regional, state and area affiliates, its members and volunteer leaders include childbirth educators, nurses, nurse midwives, physicians, students and consumers.

For more information about Lamaze International and the Lamaze Institute for Normal Birth, visit www.lamaze.org.