Minnesota Prison Doula Project

Minnesota knows how to show up for justice-impacted families!

With the generous support of folks like you last year, in 2025, we were able to offer justice-impacted families across Minnesota:

• 249+ pregnancy or parenting education groups.

• 496+ new and unique parents offered education, support, and community resources.

• 38+ prenatal visits provided for expectant mothers (parents) inside or outside a MN correctional facility. 

• 31+ postpartum visits provided for mothers (parents) inside or outside a MN correctional facility..

• In 2024, we created and supported 9 new sites and groups across Minnesota.

• We expanded our offering of supported visits to parents.

• We now offer peer support at all of our groups across the state

• We hired 2 full-time staff and 3 new contractors. 

BELIEVE IT, Minnesota! Big or small, your help answers the call. 

Can you pledge $5 or more this year

to meet our goal of raising $3,000 before we welcome 2025?

We are convinced we have one of the most amazing teams around– none of this would have been accomplished without our team showing up every day. 

We continue building relationships with the family support unit that oversees programming at one of our longest-supported facilities. Additionally, for the first time since our 2011 programming began within this facility, we also have a contract for doula services. 

Another huge win this year is that we launched our first-ever community support group for justice-impacted families. This means that we are able to expand our continuum of care for parents as they reunite with their children and launch into fresh beginnings.

With incarceration on the rise, in 2025 we are looking ahead to expanding our community support offerings to serve more parents– both fathers and mothers, along with their co-parents. We are seeking support financially to supplement the increased requests for basic need support. 

We could not continue working in compassionate solidarity with parents involved in the criminal legal system to create community, opportunity, and change without the support of our beautiful community.

The Minnesota Prison Doula Project (MPDP) seeks to bring comfort, support, and dignity to incarcerated mothers and their newborns. The Department of Corrections, Bureau of Prisons, and birth workers nationwide look to us as thought leaders to improve outcomes for parents impacted by incarceration. 

Our clients experience improved parent/child experiences, reduced maternal morbidity, and increased breastfeeding initiation and continuation, along with reduced trauma. 

We’re on a path to end prison birth beginning in MINNESOTA through: 

• Doula Care
• Prenatal and parenting education
• One-on-one Counseling
• Lactation support
• Supportive Visitation
• Support for re-entry

Together, we can do better.

Your generosity makes a significant difference in the lives of countless mothers, parents, and babies– today, and for generations. 

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The Minnesota Prison Doula Project (MnPDP) was founded in 2008. We provide support and education services to incarcerated parents across Minnesota. We work inside correctional facilities, offering doula services, prenatal & parenting education, individual peer counseling, supportive in-person visitation, re-entry support groups.

Ostara Initiative (OI) is the parent organization of MnPDP and also the Alabama Prison Birth Project. We exist to collectively transform systems by reimagining justice, advancing health, and reclaiming dignity in our policies and practices for all pregnant and parenting people.