The Madrina Project
The Madrina Project addresses critical gaps in postpartum support by providing care grounded in language justice, body sovereignty, and community wisdom. It centers healing from trauma, culturally aligned support for substance use and mental health, and the restoration of traditional postpartum practices. Through weekly home visits, wellness kits, peer support, and community conversations, the project empowers families to define healing on their own terms.
By training providers, co-creating care protocols, and evaluating impact through a decolonized lens, the Madrina Project seeks to transform how postpartum care is delivered, moving away from institutional models and toward collective healing and liberation.
Madrinas and postpartum doulas share some overlapping roles in providing support to birthing people, but they differ significantly in philosophy, approach, and relationship to community care.
Madrinas are community-rooted companions, walking alongside families as kin and cultural keepers. Their role is not to provide services, but to co-create safety, healing, and connection—especially in contexts where traditional postpartum systems have been dismantled by colonization, racism, and structural violence.
Whereas doulas offer valuable professional support, Madrinas reclaim ancestral roles as caregivers whose wisdom and care flow from the community itself.