Welcome to the sustainability and midwifery wiki. My name is Lorna Davies and I am a lecturer in midwifery at Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology. We are currently developing a course on sustainability and midwifery as a component of the Bachelor of Midwifery Programme that we are working towards collaboratively with our counterparts at Otago Polytechnic.

If you want to know more about what a wiki is, I would suggest that you look at the wikipedia entry to find out. Essentially, unlike a blog, you can contribute and edit the pages that form the website as well as create them. This makes this a creative and dynamic way of interacting with likeminded individuals online. A word in relation to managing the wiki so that you are not bombarded with messages from the site. If you go into your profile section on the site, you can decide when and why you receive messages. Otherwise the volume can become a little overwhelming.

Whilst working on the development of a course on sustainability and midwifery practice, I have been made aware of a scarcity of resources available that are relevant to midwifery in relation to this rapidly developing area.

By enrolling for the course the students will be introduced to the principles of sustainability by focussing on the interrelated characteristics of social, environmental and economic activities and systems. It also encourage them to explore the contribution that midwifery can make to sustainability by modelling less exploitative practices in order to support families and their communities in sustaining their health and well-being.

It is intended that the course will enable students to identify the future impact of current practices in relation to sustainability; demonstrate an understanding of the complexity of environmental, social/cultural and economic aspects of sustainability in a range of midwifery context; demonstrate the capacity to make links between personal, community and global issues and lastly, reflect on personal sustainability as a midwifery student.

I would be very interested to hear about your ideas around this area and to share any resources that you may have accessed.

I thought that I would kick off by sharing a few resources that may be useful.

Some years ago now, I was a trustee on the board of directors of the Women's Environmental Network (WEN) in the UK. I also formed a local group and we became quite famous for our "Wrapping is a Ripoff" campaign, where we took all of what we considered to be unnecessary packaging of our purchases in the local branch of a large supermarket chain. I was subsequently asked to appear on a 30 minute consumer programme around this subject area, which was great fun and I went on to co-write a book on sustainability called 'Green Living' with Bernadette Vallely who was one of the founders of WEN. I checked out their site, as I haven't done so for a while and they are still, I am delighted to say, keeping their heads above water and even have Hayley Westenra as a 'matron' as opposed to a 'patron'. They are still flagging up many of the issues that we initiated some fifteen or so years ago now, and a number of new ones, many of which I would consider to be pertinent to midwifery, such as the real nappy campaign and many of their health related issues. Sadly, the organisation, which has always been strapped for cash, has had to abandon some of the projects that they have been working on, because of failure to generate funds.

I wrote an article called 'Ecological Midwifery' some years ago for Midwifery Matters, the ARM journal. I updated this for the website that I co-host withwoman.co.uk Tracking this article down proved to be a bit of a revelation, because when 'ecological midwifery' is googled, it provides far more links than 'sustainability and midwifery'. I will check out some of the links and report back later.

My colleague Rea sent me a link to a youtube video featuring The Black Seeds (a New Zealand band) performing "The Answer" which is an amazing piece of music but an equally amazing piece of animation. It is full of imagery and metaphor and has an ending that gives us hope.This would make a great trigger for learning and will make a useful addition to the portfolio of teaching resources for sustainability. Thank you Rea

This whole thing is getting quite exciting now. I am so impressed at the number of people who have responded and the number who have contributed. Just in case you missed it on the thread, Midwikied has posted a film which encapsulates the principles of sustainability called 'The Story of Stuff' It is a generic exploration of the issues but is worth a look for a few minutes. Also thanks to flossiemidwife for adding the page 'what is sustainability'. There is also the addition of a page which invites contributors to apply the priniciples of sustainability to midwifery