Last year at this time we didn’t know if Birth Roots would be open in November 2021. Because of the powerful response from our community, we are not only here, but we are busily planning for 2022 and beyond. 

We have spent this year fulfilling the commitment we made when we launched our Resilient Roots Campaign in late 2020: with investments from you, we promised to be stronger and better positioned to serve families. We promised that the financial support from this community would mean that Birth Roots could continue supporting families by building connections, offering tools, and exploring solutions to some of the most critical social challenges of modern parenthood. 

We are thrilled to share with you our many accomplishments of the last year as we begin our end-of-year fundraising - a process that generates crucial funding for Birth Roots and ensures that we have the resources to budget effectively for programs and events to meet the needs of parents in Maine.

We invite you to share in our joy at these accomplishments, take a moment to celebrate the community that you are a part of (that you helped create!), and consider making a gift today to support our work in the next year as we build on this momentum and support more parents and families in the year ahead.

With your support, over the last year Birth Roots has:

• Completed a successful grassroots campaign that generated lost fundraising income due to the COVID-19 pandemic and safeguarded this important Portland institution.

• Hired our first (part-time) Executive Director, without which we would not have had the administrative and institutional support to remain open.

• Increased outdoor programming; more than tripled Baby Roots Nature Camp offerings from 6 sessions in 2019 to 20 sold-out sessions in 2021, and served 198 unique families.

• Relaunched our FREE community groups that had been placed on hold during the pandemic; our S.O.S. Club, a facilitated group for those experiencing sleep or feeding troubles, and our New Parent Nest, an informal social gathering.

• Served 558 families with prenatal programming and 284 families with post-natal support; we also reached 166 families with responsive, online programming to address immediate needs of parents.

With an investment from you today, we can continue to improve and expand our work to help create the conditions for healthier families in our state.

With gratitude, 

Leah Deragon and Emily Murray, Co-founders

Kate McCarthy, Executive Director

The Birth Roots Board of Directors