We Invest
Sustaining ecosystems requires sustaining people. Across the country, Black, Indigenous, and Latine women leaders, birth workers, organizers, and community advocates are navigating extraordinary levels of burnout, extraction, and underinvestment despite carrying critical leadership responsibilities. We invest, because their voices must remain visible, and we know their leadership is essential to systems change.
We Connect
Trusted spaces where stakeholders can build relationships, strengthen alignment, surface implementation realities, explore emerging challenges, and collaborate strategically are necessary as New Jersey’s maternal health ecosystem expands. We coordinate and connect, because in moments of rapid systems growth, relationship-centered convening becomes a critical form of leadership.
We Partner
Sustainable maternal health ecosystems require investment not only in institutions, innovation, and policy, but also, in relationships, leadership pipelines, community-rooted organizations, and the people carrying the daily work of birth justice forward. We partner strategically, because building a more connected, equitable, and community-rooted future for maternal and infant health in New Jersey requires all of us.
We Amplify
Through regular newsletters and storytelling, we share the latest in local advocacy, learning, and funding opportunities and spotlight community members doing the work to ensure safer, more joyful birth experiences for Black, Indigenous, and Latine families, because uplifting and preserving community wisdom is itself a form of ecosystem sustainability.
Focused on the Future
The Cecile D. Edwards Birth Justice Leadership Fund is dedicated to supporting birth justice leadership development sustainability and strengthening community-rooted maternal health ecosystems across New Jersey.
Guided by Community
Our Community Advisory Committee (CAC) is comprised of birth equity champions with lived experience who provide strategic counsel on opportunities to advance birth equity in New Jersey and guide funding decisions to ensure resources are directed to organizations working closest to the communities they serve.