A year ago, my partner Alex Wakeford and I came up with an idea. We wanted to make a film that would change the world. More specifically, we wanted to create a film that would galvanize an army of birth warriors to help revolutionize birth around the world. Our journey really began three years ago with the birth of our daughter.

As we realize now, it was an all too familiar story; a cascade of interventions eventually leading to an emergency caesarean (breech, then the baby turned, then induction, then c-section). Our lack of knowledge meant we felt dis-empowered and scared.As filmmakers, we realized we could help other people in the same situation.

So after making two other films about birth (DOULA! doulafilm.com & REAL BIRTH STORIES realbirthstories.com), we came up with an even bigger more ambitious plan. We wanted to go global. Our vision was to create a video website aimed at parents and birth professionals to empower ALL women to know they can have a positive birth fully informed of their choices. The videos would be short and share-able via all social media networks (Facebook, Twitter etc). The videos would offer credible evidence-based information and opinions from the world's leading birth experts including: Marilyn Curl (President, Lamaze International), Ina May Gaskin, Sheila Kitzinger, Michel Odent, Elizabeth Davis, Debra Pascali-Bonaro, Professor Soo Sowne, Professor Cecily Begley, Professor Lesley Page, Professor Kerstin Uvnas-Moberg, Professor Sally Tracy, Professor Ngai Fen Cheung, Assoc. Professor Denis Walsh plus many other leading midwives, academics, obstetricians, birth educators, doulas and birth campaigners.

Then we came up with an even better idea. To make the whole thing FREE! Up until now, everything has been completely funded by ourselves from the profits of the DOULA! documentary (we haven't seen a penny ourselves). We hope that if people like what we're doing then hopefully they might want to make a donation so that we can keep on going.

So now, exactly a year after coming up with the idea we are ready to launch ONE WORLD BIRTH today, Thursday 1st September 2011. The first day of the revolution.

Each month we will be releasing lots of films and clips about a certain hot-issue about birth. We want people around the world to watch the videos, connect with each other and start discussions about the issues with people outside their immediate "birth circle" so that we can break birth into the mainstream.

And next year, we will release a feature-length documentary for worldwide cinema release about all these issues to help create a tipping point where change can and will happen.This is just the start. We want to keep on filming, to keep building the video resources and to keep building an army of birth warriors who together will become the birth revolution. Join us.

Help save birth and change the world.
http://oneworldbirth.net
Toni Harman, Producer / Director / Co-Creator, ONE WORLD BIRTH
Email: toni@altofilms.com
http://oneworldbirth.net
http://www.facebook.com/oneworldbirth
On Twitter: @oneworldbirth

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