Black Breastfeeding Week: Terry Jo Curtis "Every Ounce Counts" Scholarship Fund

Terry Jo Curtis "Every Ounce Counts" Scholarship honors Terry Jo Curtis, IBCLC, who founded Indiana’s Black Breastfeeding Coalition and was a powerful voice promoting breastfeeding for all families in her community. She was courageous enough to not stand by while black babies in Indiana died at a rate that is nearly twice the national average.  Ms. Curtis passed  in May of 2014. 

This scholarship was established in 2018 to create a more robust representation of women or men of color in the field of lactation in the state of Indiana.  IBBC's intention is to raise awareness, advocacy and leaders in these roles to assist in eliminating Indiana's devastating inequalities in infant and maternal mortality through breastfeeding.  They were able to fund 6 women to attend conferences or courses in 2019 with the help of their sponsors, fundraising and the Indiana Department of Health. (IBBC website-2020)

What Is Black Breastfeeding Week—And Why Is It More Important Than Ever? A few reasons:

1) Black women in the United States experience unacceptably poor maternal health outcomes. Black women are three to four times more likely to experience a pregnancy-related death than white women.

2) Black women breastfeed at a lower percentage rate than white women do. 85 percent of white women have ever breastfed, versus 69 percent of Black women.

3) COVID-19 has magnified the effects of pre-existing barriers to breastfeeding. Black communities have been disproportionately impacted by the virus—compared to their white counterparts, nearly three times as many Black folks died from it.

Read more here from Forbes about the state of Black Maternal Breastfeeding in the U.S.


We collaborate with our community, for our community.

Until the end of the month, The Little Timmy Project will be creating a new fundraising campaign for the Terry Jo Curtis "Every Ounce Counts" scholarship fund.

It costs around $750 to pay for a course, course materials and sit for the exam to become a Certified Lactation Consultant (CLC). It costs $620 to sit for the IBCLC exam and almost $500 to re-certify every 5 years. These are just a few of the costs required to enter the lactation field. It is so important that we improve the diversity in this field and this is how you can help!

Why is this scholarship important?

“A more diverse field of breastfeeding workers and advocates will translate into less racial bias and fewer health disparities. That will cause higher breastfeeding rates for black and hispanic populations and lower infant mortality. Breastfeeding and breastmilk can protect premature babies from dying of infections and other babies from dying of SIDs. Women who breastfeed are healthier, also. Indiana ranks near the bottom quarter of states for our rates of black/hispanic infants dying and our numbers of black and hispanic women who are able to meet their long term breastfeeding goals.” -IBC

Your donations matter!

The Little Timmy Project champions were able to provide $1,000 to the scholarship fund with for Black Breastfeeding Week. This amount will cover 1.5 scholarships for individuals! 

We know with your support we could easily donate another $1,000 and make it 3 funded scholarships total!!

YOU are directly supporting moms by donating to this wonderful scholarship fund. $1, $5, $50 -- whatever you can give helps! Support through our Facebook Campaign.

This is a message from the Indiana Breastfeeding Coalition:
Please share this with family, friends and co-workers. We need your donations and more to meet our $5000 goal for this campaign. That will allow us to grant 6 more scholarships this year to help bring equal representation to the breastfeeding support network in our state. See more here.

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