QMNC Calabash Cafe
Join our monthly, virtual, global gathering and share stories, resources, and learnings related to reproductive justice.
Connect with the QMNC community in a relaxed, intimate virtual setting
At each Calabash Cafe, we will connect with and learn from our global community of researchers. Get comfortable, grab a cup of tea, and join us for a relaxed, facilitated experience.
Join us live and on the QMNC platform
Our live gatherings will include facilitated dialogue and networking sessions. Presentations will be recorded and posted on the QMNC platform, where we will continue the conversation and build community. We are rotating timezones to ensure these sessions are available to QMNC members regardless of where in the world you live.
Meet our facilitator, Micknai Arefaine
Micknai Arefaine (she/they) is a birthworker, cultural organizer, and reproductive anthropologist. She serves as QMNC Equity Project Manager and works with QMNC leadership and fellows on a scoping review of Epistemic Justice research. For her Master’s research in Applied Anthropology, Micknai led a study with her community of women in the Tigray region of Northern Ethiopia where she investigated how they model, express, and reflect the values of community, trust, care, stability, and futurity through their perceptions and sentiments regarding social and political change.
Our next Calabash Cafe
Topic: Birth Futures: Towards an Ecosystem of Care
Facilitator: Micknai Arefaine
Event 1: Wednesday, December 4, 2024 at 3:00AM EST
Event 2: Thursday, December 5, 2024 at 8:00AM EST
Imagine a future where every birth is an empowering, supported experience … a world where innovative care models, community involvement, and thoughtful technology blend to create an ecosystem of holistic, human-centered care for every expectant parent and newborn, regardless of their background or geography.
At our next Calabash Cafe, we will unite our collective imaginations to envision that future together, joined by Birth Futures: a team of midwives, young parents, designers, and health care professionals in India, Peru, and the Netherlands who have imagined birth futures for the year 2100.
How we experience birth shapes our lives profoundly. While many providers strive to center family needs, the current systems of birth care are often shaped by larger forces like power structures, financial incentives, misogyny, systemic racism, and a focus on disease rather than protecting physiology.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Join us for this special event, as we harness the power of social dreaming to imagine alternative futures outside the constraints of current norms and assumptions. Don’t miss this chance to add your perspective to the vision!
Learn more about Birth Futures and our presenters here.
This event will explore concepts central to QMNC’s priorities, particularly Priority 1, the Midwifery Model of Care.
Registration is free for QMNC members.
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Why the name “Calabash Cafe”?
The calabash has many names in many languages and has a long history of use by humans. It is a symbol of home, the womb, community, water, and wisdom.
We chose this name because both the Calabash and the Cafe are part of human existence around the world. They symbolize gathering together to drink from the universal and timeless well of knowledge and understanding. We look forward to learning from one another what these symbolize in our respective cultures and traditions while co-creating our own community as we gather around the Calabash.
“Indeed, throughout the African diaspora, among different religious and spiritual groups, the calabash is a sacred object that often serves divine purposes.” - Gina Athena Ulysse
“Many plants have worked their way into our lives, but few have done so with as much flair as the calabash. For over ten thousand years, people have used the calabash (known also as the bottle gourd and formally as Lagenaria siceraria) in all sorts of ways. They’ve eaten it as food. They’ve used it as fishing floats, as pontoons for river rafts, as goblets, as pipe stems. And around the world, people make music with it.” – Carl Zimmer