Reflections on 2019
by Janie Rakow
As one year ends and another begins, it has become a tradition at INELDA to reflect on our accomplishments and look ahead to future goals. In that process, we inventory our performance statistics from the past year and do some soul searching. Did we meet our goals and commitments to our trainees, members, and subscribers? Did we meet our internal goals as an organization? INELDA and the end of life doula field are evolving rapidly. Often, we work at breakneck speed to develop our education, informational materials, and website functionality. January each year is our time to pause and ponder the year that was, so we can prepare for new goals in the year ahead.
In 2019, we did 16 public trainings all over the U.S., producing 928 new doulas. We did 6 trainings for several hospices, and one for a community in New Jersey. All totaled, INELDA has trained over 3,000 doulas since incorporating as a nonprofit 501(c)3 organization in February 2015.
Last year also saw the growth in our membership number, which now stands at 1,140. One of the benefits of membership is our bi-monthly, member-only webinars. In our webinars, we often interview thought leaders in the end of life care field, focusing our discussions on cutting-edge developments and best practices. In 2019 we interviewed BJ Miller, Kimberly Paul, Amy Wright Glen, and doulas from the East Bay End of Life Doula Network, a doula collective operating in the San Francisco area of CA. Next year we intend to keep interviewing such luminaries. First up: Eben Alexander and Karen Newell on January 29.
Continuing the statistical inventory: we now list 365 doulas on our doula directory, a big increase from the year before. Many of those doulas have been acquiring their clients through the directory. We are proud of our ability to serve both our doulas and the public in this way. In addition to searching our doula directory, people regularly contact us looking for help in finding a doula. If there is nobody in their area on the directory, we will connect a potential client with one of our trained doulas, who will serve them as best they can long distance.
In keeping with our commitment to the highest standards in the industry, INELDA redesigned its certification process in 2019. While we expanded the requirements, we also made the entire process clearer to follow and addressed logistical difficulties some doulas faced as they pursued certification. We have sent out over 800 certification packets to our trained doulas, and anticipate a large increase in the number of INELDA Certified End of Life Doulas in the next year or two.
On the technical side of our operations, we recognized that our website needed to become more sophisticated, so we could better support our members, as well as people turning to us to stay abreast of developments in the field. We invested a significant amount of time and money to accomplish this goal. Now, our trained doulas, members, and even subscribers to our newsletter have the ability to login and change or update their profile.
Through the login feature, depending on the kind of affiliation a person has with INELDA, people can access the online portion of our doula training class, list themselves in the doula directory, and listen on-demand to all of the member-only webinars from the past. We are extremely pleased with the results and feel confident that the changes will help our future growth for quite some time to come.
Continuing our mission to assist dying people in underserved populations—at no charge—INELDA conducted another successful training at the California Men’s Colony prison in San Luis Obispo, CA in partnership with the Hospice of San Luis Obispo County. We also connected with the administrators in an Illinois prison, and hope that we can do a free training there in the year ahead.
In addition, after a number of discussions over the last several months of 2019, we agreed to offer a pro bono training to volunteer doulas at Joshua’s House, a homeless hospice being built in Sacramento, CA. As I write this article, one of our trainers is conducting the first of what we anticipate will be a number of trainings there. In the future, we hope to expand our work at homeless hospices throughout the U.S., not to mention reinvigorating our work with veterans and communities of color.
Returning to the questions we asked ourselves at the beginning of this article: did we meet our goals for 2019? In almost every area of our operations, we believe we did. In fact, we greatly surpassed our goals. We hope this new year will produce similar results. But we also know that to maintain success, we have to keep working as hard as we did this past year—the changes in the field won’t slow down; in fact, they are likely to speed up. We are committed to remaining at the forefront of the changes in the doula field, so we can serve you better, and through you, serve the people who need our work.