Connect with the QMNC community and explore how birth is practiced, understood, and shaped by culture, community, and health systems
around the world.

A series, rooted in the QMNC framework

Calabash Cafe: Birth in Every Culture is a virtual gathering series hosted by QMNC. Each session explores what quality maternal and newborn care looks like in context - through the lived realities of practitioners, communities, and researchers from around the world. Grounded in the QMNC framework, the series creates space for shared learning, epistemic diversity, and the kind of genuine dialogue that can challenge assumptions and build new knowledge.

Sessions feature guest speakers followed by facilitated conversation. Get comfortable, grab a cup of tea, and join us.

Who is this for?

Calabash Cafe is open to all QMNC members -- and QMNC membership is free. Each session brings together researchers, midwives, community members, artists, and early-career scholars, with a particular commitment to centering voices from communities that are often underrepresented in global maternal health research conversations..

Join us live - or catch the highlights

Live events are hosted on the QMNC platform. Sessions are 90 minutes and are timed to reach participants across time zones. Can't make it live? Edited highlights are shared publicly via social media and YouTube, and recordings are available to QMNC members on the platform, where the discussion continues.

Meet our facilitator, Micknai Arefaine

Calabash Cafe: Birth in Every Culture is hosted and led by Micknai Arefaine (she/they), a birthworker and cultural organizer. As QMNC Equity Project Manager, Micknai leads the direction and vision of the Calabash Cafe series, drawing on her expertise in epistemic justice, cross-cultural dialogue, and community knowledge systems. 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.

Check Upcoming Events for the next Calabash Cafe.