Helping Mothers and Newborns Survive and Thrive
Every mother deserves a safe birth. Every newborn deserves a healthy start. Yet in many underserved communities, childbirth still carries serious risks because too many women deliver without clean supplies, skilled support, timely information, or access to quality maternal health services.
The MamaSafe Initiative is Empower To Thrive Development Initiative’s maternal and newborn health programme designed to make childbirth safer for women and babies in underserved communities. The initiative promotes clean and safe delivery practices by providing clean delivery kits, strengthening the capacity of frontline health workers, educating pregnant women and families, and working with health authorities to improve maternal and newborn health outcomes.
MamaSafe responds to a simple but urgent reality: many preventable maternal and newborn deaths are linked to infections, unsafe delivery conditions, delayed care-seeking, and gaps in access to skilled birth support. By equipping women, health workers, and communities with practical tools and life-saving knowledge, the initiative helps reduce avoidable risks before, during, and immediately after childbirth.
Through MamaSafe, pregnant women receive clean delivery materials and health education that help them prepare for safer delivery. Midwives, community health workers, and facility-based providers are supported to promote infection prevention, respectful maternity care, early referral, and essential newborn care. Families and communities are also engaged so they can better understand the importance of antenatal care, skilled birth attendance, facility delivery, and timely care-seeking when danger signs appear.
In Nasarawa State, MamaSafe has shown promising results. With support from partners, including the TY Danjuma Foundation and Rotary, the initiative distributed clean delivery kits, worked with the Ministry of Health, and supported community-level maternal health promotion. Reported outcomes included an 11.5 percentage point increase in facility delivery and a 12.2 percentage point increase in skilled birth attendance, demonstrating the potential of practical, community-rooted interventions to improve maternal and newborn health.
MamaSafe is more than the distribution of birth kits. It is a pathway to dignity, confidence, and safer motherhood. It brings together supplies, education, health worker engagement, community trust, and government partnership to ensure that women are not left to face childbirth risks alone.
ETTDI’s goal is to expand MamaSafe so that more women in rural and underserved communities can access the support they need for safe delivery and newborn care. Planned scale-up includes reaching additional health facilities, strengthening partnerships with state ministries of health, deepening community education, and improving access to clean birth supplies for women who need them most.
By investing in MamaSafe, partners help protect mothers, give newborns a stronger start in life, and strengthen community health systems from the ground up.
Our Vision
A future where no woman is placed at unnecessary risk during childbirth because of poverty, lack of clean supplies, poor information, or weak access to skilled care.
