About the Center
Chicago South Side Birth Center is a non-profit startup that will be an independent, Black midwife-led Birth Center located on the South Side of Chicago.
Our Vision
The Chicago South Side Birth Center will help address inequities in birth outcomes by providing culturally centered midwifery care alongside families and within the community to promote wellness and abundance in whole health.
With only four hospitals on the South Side providing maternity services, the lack of access to care is an emergency. Without proper intervention and care, rates of infant and maternal morbidity will increase and access will continue to be a barrier. It is our goal at the Chicago South Side Birth Center to disrupt these maternal health outcomes for Black birthing people and their families across the city’s South Side.
We aim to offer a low risk option for birth and mixed risk option for reproductive health care for people in their own neighborhood and community. We hope to be an answer to the lack of care options currently available on the Southside as well as a solution to the disparate maternal and child health rates among Black birthing people and children on the South Side.
Our story
“All that you touch you change…”
It was in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd when Jeanine Valrie Logan and Karie Stewart, two Black midwives, came together to change the landscape of Black maternal Health on Chicago’s south side with a vision to open a birth center. Alongside them and many other and Birth Center activists and legislative sponsors, Jeanine helped write and pass HB738 which expands birth centers in the state of Illinois to areas where the Black maternal and child health outcomes are worse than the county and state–these areas including the South Side, West Side, and East St. Louis. HB738 was signed into law in August 2021.
Jeanine founded Chicago South Side Birth Center in June 2021.
*Earthseed, Parables of the Sower, Octavia Butler
Our Guiding Principles
“Freedom is a place”
Ruth Wilson Gilmore
Meet Our Staff
Jeanine Valrie Logan
Dreamer. Grower. Culture Bearer.
Founder + Lead Steward
Jeanine (she/her/goddess) is a Certified Nurse Midwife, certified lactation specialist, and has a strong background in public health and reproductive health policy. She is a birth justice activist and often speaks publicly on breastfeeding, birth justice, doulas, and midwifery in the Black community. She is the co-editor of the book Free to Breastfeed: Voices of Black Mothers. Jeanine works collectively with birth workers of color and allies to address birth inequity--including most recently on the writing and passing of HB738 which expands birth centers in the state of Illinois. She is currently working on the development of Chicago South Side Birth Center, a nonprofit, midwife-led, culturally congruent, community focused birth center to be located on Chicago’s south side. She received a Bachelor of Arts from Fisk University and a Master in Science in Nursing from DePaul University. She also received a Master of Public Health with a concentration in Global Reproductive Health from the George Washington University. Jeanine completed the nurse midwifery program at Frontier Nursing University in the fall of 2018. Jeanine is a wife and mama of three awesome Empresses, all of which were born out of the hospital-2 at home and 1 at a birth center. Jeanine spends her extra time with family, building bonfires, creating art, making herbal medicines, reading, gardening, and swooning under her favorite cedar tree.
Shaquan Dupart
alchemist
Development Steward
Lesley Kennedy (she/her) has dedicated her 20+year career to helping strengthen Chicago’s non-profit sector. Lesley owns and operates a thriving consulting practice primarily focused on organization development, culture improvement, and leadership coaching. Prior to consulting full-time, Lesley most recently served as Chief Equity Officer for Girl Scouts of Greater Chicago and Northwest Indiana and was previously Director of Strategy and Organization Development at Cabrini Green Legal Aid (CGLA), supporting the organization’s internal culture and strategic direction. Lesley served as Youth & Opportunity United’s Chief Program Officer, leading the development of Y.O.U. 's long-term program strategy and oversaw the daily impact of more than 50 staff members across 11 program sites. Lesley brings an extraordinary breadth and depth of experience to the sector. She joined Y.O.U. following five years as a Senior Program Officer at the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, where she pioneered and managed the Foundation’s Child and Youth Education and Health and Wellness Portfolios. Prior to McCormick, Lesley served for seven years as the Executive Director of the Chicago Girls’ Coalition, a Chicago-based non-profit that provided capacity building and technical assistance to girl-serving organizations and programs. Lesley led McCormick Foundation’s integration of a racial equity lens to their giving as well as pioneered racial equity all-staff training at Y.O.U. and CGLA. In 2018, Lesley contributed as an Advisory Committee member to Equity in the Center’s report: Awake to Woke to Work: Building a Race Equity Culture. Lesley has a master’s degree in Social Service Administration from the University of Chicago and a bachelor’s degree in English and Women’s Studies from Stephens College. Lesley has guest lectured on inclusive leadership at University of Chicago’s Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy and Practice and Loyola University’s Quinlan School of Business. Lesley's commitment to birth equity is demonstrated over the past ten years as an advisory board member for PCC Community Health Center, board member for Chicago South side Birth Center, certified lactation counselor, birth educator, and student midwife. She happily lives on the south side of Chicago with her husband and three young people.
Shaquan (she/her/alchemist) is a mother, champion of her people, birth and postpartum doula, childbirth educator, Certified Lactation Counselor and student nurse midwife.
Shaquan always knew that she wanted to do something super impactful in her community but had no idea what that was going to look like, until she happened upon another doula’s work. This opened her up to a completely different world, a place where families had options. She learned a plethora of information that she was not privy to during the birth of her own child, and so her journey began…
Shaquan is also the founder of the Chicago Black Doula Alliance; a community of Black doulas where they celebrate and support each other and discuss various ways of how they can help families reclaim their power and indigenous practices by providing them with the resources to make informed decisions.
Through her work as a private doula and the founder of CBDA, Shaquan is committed to helping change the Black Birth narrative, one family at a time.
Lesley Kennedy
Liberated. Free Thinker. mother.
Director of OrgaNIZATIONal Development & Strategy
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Your Support Matters
Donor contributions help us to develop our beautiful future home and the services we will provide. Chicago South Side Birth Center is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization and all donations are tax deductible. Our tax ID# is 87-1221956.
We thank you for your support!