Two years ago, a group of Boulder, Colorado women initiated a project to train midwives in Afghanistan due the shocking rates of mother and infant mortality -- one of the worst in the world, due to 27 years of continual wars and extreme socio-economic and political disruptions. Jennifer Braun, a midwife and mother of two children, traveled to Afghanistan with a small group in 2004, making connections with a clinic run by the Agha Khan Foundation in Bamiyan. She has continued to return to Afghanistan since that time, working with doctors and nurses at the clinic regularly for the last two years where she trains village women in safe and sustainable midwife practices.

Jennifer has continued to raise money and travel to rural Afghanistan, often at great risk to herself. But for the risks she takes, young mothers of Afghanistan have benefited. Almost single-handedly, Jennifer has transformed what was a well-intended idea by a group of women to help women in Afghanistan into a working reality of health care and hope for impoverished mothers and their infants.

Jennifer maintains a very successful business in Boulder, Colorado. But she earns neither profit, nor rewards, nor honorariums for her work abroad. She has quietly, diligently done the hard and often dangerous work of providing health care in a hostile land for a marginalized people in need, particularly the mothers and infants.

In her own practice, Jennifer Braun has achieved her life-long commitment to provide for the health and safety of women and infants -- across age, gender, class, and cultural borders. She is committed to providing excellent healthcare and to empowering women to help other women. Extraordinarily intelligent, and committed, Jennifer Braun shows the power of one person when he or she commits to helping others, both in our communities and the far-flung lands abroad.

To learn more about Jennifer and her cause, please visit:
www.midwifeassist.org.

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