The Virtual International Day of the Midwife and resource-poor countries

One of the aims of the Virtual International Day of the Midwife has always been to provide professional development opportunities to midwives who cannot access face-to-face CPD, and especially cannot get to the tri-yearly International Congress of Midwives. In particular, we have been keen to share with our midwifery sisters in resource-poor countries.

Contradictions
We are very mindful that using online technologies is a contradiction in terms, being that midwives who are resource-poor are unlikely to be able to access the internet, so they can join this conference. However, we have always posted the recordings, so they can be accessed in an ongoing manner. We know this isn't perfect by a long chalk, but we have tried to do the best we can.

But is "doing the best we can" actually of no use at all? In fact, are we being arrogant and culturally incompetent with the whole concept of the VIDM?


What we're doing so far
This year I have discovered contact details for the member associations of the International Confederation of Midwives, and emailed them information about the VIDM 2012. This has attracted a few speakers and enquires from midwives in Africa. I have had a few emails from people who speak French and Spanish, and I use Google Translate (or another person) to communicate with them. I have tried to invite Chinese-speaking midwives to present, as well as other non-English speaking midwives - we are very keen to have non-English session. But we haven't managed to make this happen this year.

Congratulations?
So I have been congratulating myself with how well we're doing. But the reality is...we're only reaching midwives in resource-rich countries. More to the point....we have no midwives on our committee who come from resource-poor countries, so they have no involvement in the planning of the conference. Which means I do not even know if the topics we are providing has any relevance to midwives in resource-poor countries.

Change of model?
What I am wondering is whether we need to take a whole new approach? Rather than providing an event using a top-down model of development and application, we should turn our attention to contacting midwifery associations in resource-poor countries and offering our services to mentor, facilitate and work along side midwives as they develop their own online conferences or CPD events/resources. Or it may be that they say online events, e-learning etc are just not relevant to them.

I have no idea how practical this is as an idea. What do you think? How do you think we can support colleagues in resource-poor countries using online tools and methodologies? Should it even be something we think about? What do you feel are the issues, and how can they be approached?





Image: 'Ethiopia'
http://www.flickr.com/photos/64749744@N00/2933904745