 Thank you very much Jane. So effective midwifery leadership has been identified as a key component for improving the midwifery profession at the strategic level. The Bangladesh Midwifery Society in partnership with the Royal College of Midwives have developed a bespoke Young Midwives Tehida program for Bangladeshi Midwives with midwifery only being introduced in Bangladesh in 2014. Ensuring midwives have a peace of their decision making table in Bangladesh. It's integral for embedding the profession into the country's healthcare agenda. So the Young Midwives leader program developed, delivered a range of training to participants aiming to equip them with important midwifery leadership skills. These included training on project management, IT, advocacy, media and training and research and writing abstract. In our presentation today, you will hear from some members of the first cohort of the Young's Midwives Leader program who graduated. Alongside sharing their experiences, they reflect on the success and challenges of the program so far. So I would now hand over to Joy Kemp who is representing Pinky and Karima who are not able to join us from Bangladesh due to sound issues. So welcome Joy. Thanks very much Jennifer and sorry for the confusion. I was also listening into UNFPA webinar this morning and that they had similar problems with Bangladesh. So I think it's just an issue with connection. Now we have listening. The project manager from the twinning project in Bangladesh whose name is Shamin Shobnam Joya. So if someone is able to unlock her microphone, she could help me out with this but otherwise I'm happy to crack on. So welcome everyone. It's really lovely to be here with you all and I can see from the chat line that there are several people who have participated in this project in Bangladesh who are listening in. So it's really lovely to hear from you all. Huge admiration for all the midwives in Bangladesh and everything that they are doing at the moment with the current COVID-19 crisis. Bangladesh Midwifery Society has really stepped forward to support its members to help get them PPE and the young leaders who've been developed during this project are really doing an absolutely amazing job. So huge love and respect to you all and I hope Karima and Pinky are listening even though they have been unable to do this presentation. So at the last two virtual International Day of the Midwife Conferences we have presented something about the work in Bangladesh. So I'm just going to slide forward to the first slide and Shamin is your microphone on? You're unlocked because if it is you could talk about the history of midwifery in Bangladesh. Shamin was logged in as listen only and she's coming back in hopefully with the microphone. Thank you. So I'll just start and then she can join in. So the Honourable Prime Minister in Bangladesh in 2010 at a meeting of the General Assembly of the UN committed to double the percentage of skilled births attended and to train by 2015 3000 midwives and so midwifery training started in Bangladesh in 2013 and the first midwives qualified in 2016 and right now there are staff in all 400 and I may be wrong here but there are midwives in all 427. Oh this was the commitment from the Honourable Prime Minister to have midwifery staff in all 420 Union upper Zilla health complexes. These are like small district hospitals. People would probably know them as that or a large clinic located all the way through Bangladesh and then the Prime Minister also committed to upgrade all 59 district hospitals with 70 mother and child welfare centres as centres of excellence for emergency obstetric care services. So the government of Bangladesh in 2010 committed to introducing midwifery as a separate profession separate from nursing and they are to be hugely congratulated for that endeavour. Sharmin are you now on the line? Yes I am. Fantastic wonderful would you like to add anything to this slide before we move on? Yeah just some points that BMS is registered with Omens and Child Affairs in Bangladesh. We are active member of ICM we have head office in our you know Dhaka centrally and we have seven divisional committees in seven divisions of Bangladesh. Fantastic so just to introduce you to Sharmin she's a really wonderful woman she's in Bangladesh right now and she's the twinning project manager and the only full-time staff employed by the Bangladesh Midwifery Society. So Sharmin it's really fabulous that you're able to join me at the last minute for this presentation we really appreciate it. Thank you so much it's my pleasure. Actually there was a storm maybe this is why our two presenters couldn't be here due to the network problem. Sure so Sharmin you can see is the lady on the left hand side of this photo so that's you can you can put a face to the person who's speaking. So Sharmin would you just like to talk through this slide about BMS? This is the third slide BMS. Yeah already I have told that BMS is registered with the women's affairs in Bangladesh this is the this is all about BMS. Then the next slide here we are seeing that it is about twinning project Bangladesh Midwifery Society twinned with the Royal College of Midwives in 2017. It is a twinning project funded by UNFPA. The main objectives of the yeah enjoy anything? No you carry on and I'll talk at the end. Yeah sorry and the main objectives of the project are strengthening BMS. I mean at the beginning of there was beginning of the project there was no staff and lack of logistics and resources at BMS as it is a very new BMS have started with the midwives very newly. Then the second objective is advocate for the midwifery profession and third is create demand for midwifery services. Great thank you Sharmin. So just a bit of background to this twinning project. The twinning project is funded by UNFPA Bangladesh and it's part of a large project with the government of Bangladesh called Strengthening National Midwifery Project and it's funded by UK aid and also by Canada and Sweden. So the twinning project is just a small part of a much larger project to strengthen midwifery and lots of different partners are involved in that project including some international organizations and also lots of local Bangladesh organizations. So we're really grateful for the opportunity to be doing this project as most of our listeners will know twinning is supported by the International Confederation of Midwives as a way to strengthen the capacity of member associations. So midwives associations are encouraged to twin with each other to for mutual strengthening and there is a mutuality to this so it's not just that the RCM which is in the UK and has nearly 50,000 members and has been going for a long time since the 1800s. It's not just that we're expecting to share expertise with Bangladesh but we really want to have reciprocal learning so that we also are influenced and changed and that we can bring back the learning from our colleagues in Bangladesh to the UK and as many of our listeners will know in the UK we have large Bangladeshi diaspora population so this project is hopefully a way for us to really improve the services to Bangladeshi women in the UK as well. So that's just a background to the twinning project. You'll see me on the left of this photo in a blue sari and Montaz madam who's the president of BMS standing next to me and Tara my colleague who's online is bottom right so it's very much a team effort as Linda said teamwork in action good so we'll move on to the next slide. So Sharmin would you like to tell us about the young midwife leader program please? Yeah we have an election on 2018 before election the committee was formed by you know midwifery teachers because at that time it was 2010 there were no midwife I mean who were working in the field in the Upujalai health complexes but after election on 2018 the new committee was formed with midwives working in the facilities so you can see the midwives are really very young and they are in the photo you can see that they are very young girls maybe 25 to 27 years old and we have formed the first YML with the newly elected executive members including four midwives from BMS members team so it was a very wonderful working with them because they were young they are enthusiastic but in our country the cultural there are there are some cultural barriers like there is a common understanding among people that young people they don't understand they don't have experience so they are not so much allowed in in the forums to talk but we tried our best through this young midwife very young midwife leadership program that they can have the courage and inspiration to raise their voice like here we said that our aim for the YML program was to equip a cohort of young midwives with leadership skills and knowledge to ensure they have a seat at the decision making table in Bangladesh and are able to advocate for the midwifery profession there was a lot of training we have conducted with them especially the media advocacy in our country at the beginning people don't know didn't know about midwives we tried to develop their skill how to bake press release how to do how to communicate with press journalist how to talk with the journalist these were the training and also we have given them training grants for computer and English learning skill development and you know it was a wonderful experience after at least after I mean one year we saw that they are very keen and they can raise their voice they have the courage they have the inspiration so it was a very good experience and we are getting a very good result especially in this COVID crisis I found that yeah they are fearlessly fearlessly working and tirelessly you know working Thank you so much Sharmin I think I just moved forward okay so maybe I can talk through this YML curriculum just also to say that of course ICM has its own young midwife leader program which is really fantastic but there's only a limited number of people who are able to participate in that program and some of the Bangladeshi midwives did apply but the places were limited so really this was just an once we realized there wasn't an opportunity for many midwives from Bangladesh to participate in the ICM program we were asked to run our own program within the twinning project so that's what we've been doing so as you can see from this slide the curriculum the first cohort we've actually just taken on the second cohort of YMLs but the first cohort was very experimental I would say and it because Midwifery so knew it was quite difficult to know what the midwives needed so it has been a very organic program that has just developed and what we've been trying everything that we've been trying to do with the Bangladesh Midwifery Society has been a process of building these young midwife leaders so the program really had four strands the first one was project management these young midwife leaders they do need to know how to manage projects if they're going to get support from external donors but also just to do quality and maybe to lead quality improvement programs within their own clinical facilities and within the life of the Midwifery Society they really do need to have an understanding of project management so that's been one thread that's been running through this program then also the capacity building of the professional association in all the activities we've done I'm going to go back a couple of slides just to give you a picture this this photo with you can see in the middle there are three midwives dressed in newspaper and this was something we did last year which was to build the mission vision and values of the Midwifery Society and getting our young leaders and a couple of the older nurse midwives who are still involved in the organization to dream as if they were designing a sari what would be the vision for the association and so this capacity building of the association is also developing them as young midwife leaders and so I'll just go back to the other slide so we've got project management the capacity building of BMS as a professional association media and advocacy BMS has as one of its straplines that it's the voice of all midwives in Bangladesh and another that they believe all women in midwife have the right to a midwife's care a professional midwives association has a large a large part of its function is advocating for midwives for the profession of midwifery and also for the women and families who use the service and at the beginning of the twinning project BMS was doing a great job but had limited number of stakeholders a limited number of organizations with whom they were communicating and there's a there was a particular gap around service users and around relationships with women and also with the media and having a presence in the media so a large part of the young midwife leader curriculum has been around increasing the capacity of these young midwife leaders to advocate for themselves in the workplace there's a there's a huge opportunity a challenge for them to negotiate professional space to practice in Bangladesh where it's traditionally been very medically driven and maternity care has been through nurses so it's advocacy in the workplace advocacy in the community to raise a demand for midwifery services the public are not sensitized to what a midwife is what the role of a midwife is so there is a there's a lot of advocacy to be done and these young midwife leaders through the training program have really begun to be very competent at talking with the media and advocating at a local level in their health complexes to improve quality of care so that's a big thread of the program and then the final thread of the curriculum is around developing capacity for research and also in publications and presentations so I am really disappointed for Karima and Pinky that they were not able to present today because this is was going to be their first international conference presentation because I'm sure there will be other opportunities and some work that one of our UK midwife volunteers has been doing has recently been submitted for publication with primarily with two of the young midwife leaders so that's another really important thread right let's move to the next slide with me right Sharmin I think you could talk about this slide a bit more because it's all about the media advocacy thank you just now I have been informed by Karima she is in there but she is muted just if possible she can join with us okay maybe someone can try and unmute Karina hi Sharmin Karima has gone offline again so I can't unmute her unless she comes back online so when she comes back I will unmute her thank you okay you keep going Sharmin for now thank you okay actually I would first like to say that RCM Royal College of Midwife the help of RCM was tremendous to me I have been working from you know since 15 years in the development sector I found that RCM trying to develop the capacity of the young midwife so nicely and the change I can see the change through this you can see the you know publications here here our Bangladeshi best newspapers covered their news this last year I was I joined in BMS in 2017 at the beginning the newspapers were not much listening to to us but in 2008 in the middle of 2018 I found that people are you know perspective to to the midwives they started recognizing the work of midwives as in 2018 they were they are they have started working Bangladeshi best newspapers like Ittefark they published the news that midwife is the friend when an woman required for woman need this photo in the pink pink dress with the woman then Jono Konto Manu Konto they published our newses some very big news television channels also covered the newses we had program in Radio Dhoni in Radio Dhoni I participated with the education secretary and we faced questions from all over the country and she was answering and Asma she's Asma she was answering from the questions of the anchor also it was a very nice experience because I face to face I was you know practically I was you know realizing that the change in them was reflecting so we did a lot of advocacy and and as a result I found that they are very you know confident and we also build BMS build a good relationship and repo with the media radio newspaper then online platform so it was a great experience great and you can see on this slide the top right hand corner is Pinky I know Pinky's listening she's just been chatting on the chat forum so Pinky is giving a presentation at the BMS AGM last year and that's also Karima in pink helping a lady to breast feed I think so you can see our two presenters up there good let's move on so Sharmin can I leave this slide to you yeah yeah this is about the capacity development we did a lot of the capacity development training for our executive member I mean the young midwife leaders eight trainings we took place last year to say 375 participants some trainings were on e-learning platform BMS have a e-learning platform of this is almost there is there was last year 48 courses for free for BMS members and they were successfully doing the online courses though it was it is it was very difficult for them because you know the Bangladesh is there is people don't know about the technology much most of them are living in the villages and in the villages network is very poor go through the android and smartphone they are doing the online courses and we trained the members general members how to do the online courses and we also trained them about how to be member how to you know how to get entry there information in our database there was we have distributed 17 17 training grants to our general members these grants we distributed for their computer learning skill we gave a small amount of money and through this through using the money they have completed a small course on English learning or our computer and they have also comments they get comments that this is very good for them because there is a lag in midwives in our country in English and computer skills we did review the constitution of BMS last year the constitution was developed by the former president of BMS in the year 2010 and we have reviewed the constitution after the new committee enrolled it was last year we have a AGM last year in the in GM many general members participated and they there were government government policy level and the facility tools in the AGM in the AGM our general member raised their questions and the panelists answers and answered the on the question so it was so helpful for the general members to you know inform their problems and issues in the workplace and hopefully this well this was also helpful to you know do good in their work this last year we have set the mission vision and so I especially she facilitated the workshop because a very wonderful concept it was it is a little difficult from to get the result from you know different kinds of people coming from different cultures so I am you can see that we made a shari here in the picture with newspapers it is an example of our teamwork like when we gave the newspapers for the participants they were wondering that how can we make a new newspaper shari newspaper shari and even if we made a shari maybe we cannot wear this because it is so fragile but you can see the result uh with our teamwork we are with our strength we made a shari beautifully made a shari and a guard was wearing it like and looking like a model almost so it was a um I mean it was a symbol I would say that we wanted to say that we will set a vision if it is maybe it is not realistic or some people may be saying no it is not possible but if we will be willing from our heart to make it we can do it this was the symbol and you can see the yeah you can see we can our environment members are very participatory and active they I I think that yes they can do and they are not now so much uh you know active in their work okay thank you Sharmin so I'm just going to move us on because we've got less than five minutes and I'm not sure how many slides are left but I'm just going to move us on so another activity of the YML program was community awareness there was a big outbreak of dengue fever in 2019 and BMS has been reaching with another partner to try and reach out so the community outreach has been a part of engagement with service users a big part of the program um also and there's a picture of Leslie here on the left hand slide who I know is listening to the presentation uh associate professor of midwifery from the UK who's been working with us one of the big parts of the project as we said earlier is helping the young midwife leaders to advocate for better working conditions we know from WHO that it's not just about having educated midwives but midwives need to work in an enabling environment and so this has been a big part of the work of the young midwife leader program so also another part is the development of the database when we started the twinning project with BMS they weren't sure how many members they had or who had paid their membership fee and so we've helped them to develop a membership database and that's now being run by the young midwife leaders with support from Charmin and a internet company so developing computer skills through using the database and also using and administrating being administrators for the e-learning platform has not only helped to develop the capacity of the young leaders in participating in the e-learning but also in learning how these things work and in promoting the use of that e-learning platform throughout the membership um and then lastly and I'm just going to get Charmin but you have to be very brief Charmin to talk about how BMS has been supporting the YML through the COVID-19 pandemic. Thank you Joy. I will try actually during this COVID-19 lots of general members from BMS communicated with BMS, BMS executives they were not getting the PPEs and you know that till now six midwives are infected from BMS what we did we when we learned that they need PPE we sent some fund and through the fund we distributed PPEs it's not only it's also gloves masks sanitizers they are in need then our executive members from from divisions they were so active and you know you can see that civil sergeant in the districts they were also helping us in this process then the next slide is main YML program challenges the challenges I can say the main challenges is you know during this COVID it's difficult for to do the training but we are also trying our best for to do the trainings through online and you know our executives and YML they are geographically in different places so it's not possible for us to all the time arrange face-to-face training this is a very big challenge and when we need them in one place we have to take permission from government because midwives are currently the government employees so essentially we have to make an order and it takes time to make a word order YML often not listened to due to being young this is a very big problem for us yeah YML members here and some forums they are not allowed to release their voice but I'm Sharmin you need to finish up thank you this is Jane the facilitator you need to finish up in the next two minutes with your program thank you so much for the fantastic presentation thank you then the main activities developed their own professional network currently they have a very good network like for example in Kulna all the midwives of Kulna have divisional and you know one executive member have their group online group they have you know have confidence to advocate on behalf of midwives they have developed their skill in IT and English they we have a emergency committee and the emergency committee active you working without having adequate logistics the stakeholder partners media now recognize midwives organized large we can organize large event currently conduct research we can conduct research for advocacy through the audit tool the audit tool was developed by Sara then I can I can share the Karima and Pinky's experience shall I join I'm not sure I'm not I don't think we have too much time let me just quickly run through that yeah we need to finish up thanks very much and that'd be great thank you great so just leaving that slide up there but Karima and Pinky we're going to share their personal experiences and I just love on Karima's slide having faith and courage and the connection with all midwives in Bangladesh and connecting with women some of the things that she has learned and for Pinky creating a congenial working environment where she works having the courage to raise issues and concerns on behalf of members so we're really incredibly proud of Pinky and Karima and all of the young midwife leaders on the program and we just hope you've enjoyed listening to this presentation and getting a little taste of what the twinning project and the Bangladesh Midwifery Society are up to in Bangladesh thank you everyone thank you thank you so much for listening to us thanks thank you very much joy and shaman okay so we've got some questions here shall I shall we go through them yes please if you can thank you okay so ginger midwife who I think is is a fishy midwife who's an RCM member out in Uganda in ginger fishies ask the question what difference has this made to the maternal mortality rate maternal and infant mortality I think the answer to that question is that it hasn't been measured yet and of course as I was saying earlier this small twinning project is only part of a much larger project to influence midwifery but I am hugely confident that it will have made an enormous difference to them that the wider midwifery program to the maternal and infant mortality because there are countless stories that the midwives are sharing of lives saved shaman do you have anything to add to that yes I can just say about there was a some midwives are working in front of me in the Dhaka medical college and during I heard that within two months the you know maternal deaths reduced and normal birth increased something like two percent in two months in our country there is lots of caesarean sessions happening it's a problem for us it's almost 55 percent though WHO prefer it 15 percent so it is midwives are really helping in reducing C-section that's great and there was one question from Caroline which was how can RCM members help and Caroline if you want to contact me offline I'll very happily talk you through that but really keen to engage as many of our RCM members as we can in the twinning project okay thank you very much Joy and Shaman for the incredible advice you've given us into the work you are doing in Bangladesh very important for midwifery and for women thank you so I'm going to end the recording now