Perinatal health assistant J'Viona Baker sets out items for Sankofa Reproductive Health and Healing Center's Wellness Wednesday. Parents and grandparents pick up childcare items. Credit: Yolanda Stewart | Central Current

At the entryway of the Sankofa Reproductive Health and Healing Center, J’Viona Baker, a perinatal health assistant, greeted a community member.

Walks to Sankofa have become a ritual for the community member, Lenora Rice, a Syracuse resident and grandmother.

Each Wednesday, Rice finds her way to the center for its Wellness Wednesday program, which helps parents and grandparents get childcare items. Baker helps to run the program.

That Wednesday, Rice brought a cup of homemade soup for the center’s staff. She picked up items diapers from the center.

Rice is from one of the 20 or so families that visit Sankofa by appointment or as walk-ins each week.

“The purpose is to give back to the community, just reaching out to not just families that have children, but also for adults, too, because they need things, too,” said Baker. “We are donation-based. We try to get as much as we can in, and as much as we can out.”

In 2018, three Syracuse-based doula organizations — Doula 4 a Queen, ZenG Yoga, and Village Birth International — opened Sankofa to provide support to parents and pregnant people in Syracuse’s South Side. They made Wellness Wednesdays one of their first initiatives. 

The collective serves what they call a maternal toxic zone — an area unsafe for pregnant people because of socioeconomic conditions. 

Syracuse has the second-highest rate of childhood poverty in the nation, according to United States Census Bureau data.

The region has also struggled with infant mortality, particularly among Black infants. A 2023 report from the New York State Department of Health found that Central New York had some of the highest rates of infant mortality and Black infant mortality in the state between 2016 and 2019. An analysis of infant mortality numbers by the Syracuse Post-Standard found Black infants die at a rate 4.6 times higher than that of white infants in Onondaga County. 

The doulas’ Wellness Wednesday initiative is one way they are trying to combat the problems facing children and parents in Syracuse. They receive visits from up to about 20 families each week, said Asteir Bey, Sankofa’s co-founder. 

“We are in a maternal toxic zone. Folks should be able – in addition to birthing children– (to) get essential items that they need just to sustain their well-being,” said Vickie Patterson, a doula and perinatal health care coordinator. “And, that’s why this perinatal safe spot [is here], so they can feel safe coming here getting the items they need with no questions asked.”

Even on days with heavy downpours, parents and grandparents have visited the site to receive their weekly supplies. Some family members have received services for up to two years or as long as their families need, Bey said.

Rice, a grandmother, followed Baker upstairs to a room filled with diapers, bibs, pacifiers, headbands, books, feminine products, hygiene care, and clothing and shoes for children and adults.

For South Side residents like Rice and Tracy Luter, who visit the site for their grandchildren, weekly visits to the center have become a part of their routines. 

“It’s a good thing because whatever we need or whatever we need help in, they can get the resources or they have the resources to tell us where to go from here or what we do from here,” Rice said.

Luter, from Syracuse, says she did not know the center existed until she walked by it with her grandson on their way to Mary Nelson’s Youth Center.  

“It’s really important for people to know (about the center) because I’ve spoken to plenty of people just in the past two weeks that had absolutely no idea where they can get diapers and food,” Luter said. “So anytime I receive that information I do my best to make those referrals.”

Beyond the material and educational resources families are provided, centering the overall humanity of families by not reducing them to a number is a top priority, Bey said.

“We just try to make sure that in those moments where they’re coming in for essential resources that we also can just check on them,” Bey said.

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Yolanda Stewart was raised in the Bronx, New York City. Before choosing a career path in journalism she found a voice in writing plays, short stories, and a myriad of other creative outlets. She is a 2022...