Orienting to Serve at Shiphrah

For the past two years Shiphrah Birthing Home has joined with
St. Paul University's School of Nursing to provide a place where
their students could gain real, hands-on maternal care experience.
It has been and continues to be a thoroughly delightful relationship.

St. Paul's students come from a far higher social strata than
do the women we serve at Shiphrah. To orient them to
consider how they will need to relate to the women we serve,
to accord the women the dignity and respect of real
personhood in an environment of sheer hospitality, we've
created a learning session that is not unlike our learning
sessions with our "buntis"(expectant moms).

Learning needs to be fun and so we begin to build relationships with a game called "Fruit Salad", a variation of Musical Chairs. Students were scrambling fast to not be done out of a chair.


Next, we move into a more serious vein, working with an image we call "The Paanakan Woman". We ask the students to simply describe what they see, reflect on what her struggles might be, the meaning of what they have described, and most importantly, what they have in common with her. It is always a revealing discussion, both for the students and for us.


We wrap up the orientation with the students creating and then sharing a skit in which they are to show us how they will welcome a woman who comes to the Birthing Home. It's a lot of laughter interlaced with just a wee bit of seriousness and often an amazing amount of speedily developed creativity.