World’s First Global Birthing Ecovillage (Brazil)

First Global Birthing Village is a pilot project of Miracle in the Heart social project on natural childbirth and the maternal movement for health birth Gravity.

About a year ago, we were approached by the idea of the Birthing Eco-Village by a family of volunteer activists, travellers, creators of the maternal movement for healthy birth “Gravity” and organizers of the 2 annual world flash mobs against obstetric violence “Roses Revolution” Lucy Maratkanova and Kolya Zharov. They live in Brazil for more than 2 years, where their second child was born at home.

And even this wonderful idea over the year has been very transformed, and our communication with Kolya and Lucy has grown into a strong friendship and genuine admiration for their enthusiasm, responsibility, determination and love for the world in all its manifestations.

So, we came to the fifth - fundamentally new for the modern world - type of the organization of the place of birth, where a pregnant woman:

• has time to form a microbiome (microbiota) before childbirth;
• no stress due to the transfer to another (unfamiliar) place on the onset of birth.
  
  At the same time in May 2020 Svetlana Demianova-Ponomarenko left the GRAVITA project (probably at the certain stage) strongly believing that the basic needs of a MotherBaby in childbirth and the early postpartum should be understood and protected, which means that ALL conditions for the safety of childbirth should be created (otherwise it is not the favourable conditions for any Mother to come and for any birth assistant to work).

Imagine a place with a constant warm climate for natural childbirth, where future parents during pregnancy create their own "birthing nest" by living in one of 150 private ecovillage huts located in Brazil relict forests on the ocean coast, a UNESCO object, between the famous Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo.

After childbirth, the family can stay in the Village for as long as they want (visa-free stay for up to six months for citizens of most countries), surrounded by people who are close in spirit and worldview; where home midwifery is legalized (and medical care is free for foreigners, even C-section!), where you will be living in pregnancy and the postpartum in a company already “filled with oxytocin” - among people on the eve of or already with a positive experience in the birth of their children.

Already, when the land for GRAVITA has not yet been purchased and the infrastructure of the Village has not yet been developed, couples applied up for Lucy and Kolya to come to Paraty (Brazil) for their giving birth until June 2020. Unbelievable, but it is a fact!

We really want this idea to serve as the “first sign” that paves the way for the creation of such villages in other countries, thus forming a Global Birthing Ecovillages Network.

More information about the idea and stages of the First Global Birthing Village GRAVITA project can be found here: /gravita

A video snippet about GRAVITA by Miracle in the Heart is welcome to watch here.