Birthing Kit Assembly Night

Tonight we will be assembling and packing 200 birthing kits for the Birthing Kit Foundation.

Birthing kit assembly commences a 5:30pm. A regular club meeting and dinner will follow the birthding kit assembly.

The concept of the Birthing Kit began in 1995, when Adelaide Doctor, Joy O’Hazy, attended them United Nations Fifth World Conference on Women and heard Sally Field speaking about a similar kit she had seen in Nepal. With the idea that hygiene was key to improving maternal and newborn survival in low resource settings, Joy developed the Birthing Kit – a small zip-lock bag containing six basic and clean items to be distributed to women and birthing attendants in low-resource and emergency settings.

In partnership with the Adelaide Hills Zonta Club, Joy and the dedicated volunteers began assembling and distributing these simple kits around the world. The scale and impact of this project continued to grow and what was once known as the ‘Zonta Birthing Kit Project’ transformed into the Birthing Kit Foundation Australia in September 2006. 

Since our establishment, the team at BKFA has worked to extend and enhance our reach, forming strong partnerships with many Field Partners in the Sub-Saharan Africa, Asian and Indo-Pacific regions. Our work has expanded from the original Birthing Kit Program to a range of In-Country Programs that engage individuals, families and communities to create sustainable change and improve maternal and newborn health outcomes.