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Safe, dignified maternity care for all mothers
Amani Mamas Initiative was born from a vision to provide compassionate, safe, and dignified maternity care to some of Uganda’s most vulnerable mothers and families. What started almost a decade ago as the Amani Family Centre, a fully midwife-led maternity unit, has grown into a thriving organization dedicated to maternal and child health, community support, and empowerment.
Our Story
Our journey began with a simple mission: to ensure that every mother and child, regardless of their circumstances, has access to high-quality healthcare and support. Over the years, with an ongoing support from Mama Imara, and other faithful individual and small group donors we have been able to maintain our services to provide antenatal, delivery and postnatal care, family planning, vaccinations, social support, and volunteer programs for medical and midwifery students from around the world.
At Amani Mamas Initiative, we believe in care that goes beyond clinical procedures.. We combine clinical excellence with dignity and compassion, empathy, respect, and cultural sensitivity, walking with mothers and families through every stage of pregnancy birth and early childhood. Our story is one of community, dedication, and the unwavering belief that every mother and child deserves a healthy and hopeful start in life.
AMANi's history
Amani Family centre was born out of an urgent need identified by the founder whilst working with a group of women in Kanyogoga slum, during a volunteer midwifery job in a local private hospital. Just across the road from this hospital sprawled a large slum population where she saw an urgent need to provide the same level of care to more socially vulnerable women in the slum communities that was availed by other more financially secure women.
In 2017 Diane Lockhart, a Northern Irish trained, paediatric nurse and midwife and founder of Amani Family Centre, had previously for a year been providing home support and antenatal education in the community where she had worked some years prior. After witnessing the depths of the need and seeing first hand the challenges and often dangers experienced by pregnant women and mothers who were unable to access skilled maternity support for various reasons, joined together with Courtney Kapuya, a student midwife and Co-Founder of Mama Imara (Amanis main donors) and together they acquired a small 8x8ft concrete shop. Space was extremely limited but enough for a desk, a chair and a small antenatal bed, which soon became a delivery bed!! Supplies were basic and scarce and security an on going concern.
Despite having no formal funding, and relying solely on good will donations from family and friends, Diane and Courtney were deeply passionate and committed to their calling to develop a space where they could provide safe, dignified and compassionate care to women in need.....and if possible free of charge! But they soon recognised that this was not a long term viable option in their current surroundings. Yet even in those humble surroundings very vulnerable women continued to come in increasing numbers, very grateful for the care that was provided and that they had skilled hands in their own community to assist them as they birthed new life.
From these modest beginnings, the vision for a stronger sustainable clinic began to take shape and on leaving Uganda Courtney continued her endeavours through founding Mama Imara, a registered Canadian Not for profit that has faithfully provided a large majority of Amani's funding.
Sponsors & PARTNERS
