Meet our Capstone Canada collaborators!
Here are the incredible folks who’ve come together to make this offering as expansive and radical as it is! Please explore their work, their incredible offerings and support them in all the ways you can!
Adar Shire @adarling_xo
Adar is a mother and harm reductionist. She supports the homeless and folks who are marginalized in Ottawa, Canada and believes all people deserve dignity and compassion when it comes to receiving healthcare. Adar is also a person who lives in recovery from substance use. She loves spending time with her daughter and watching true crime stories.
Chrystal Toop @blackbirth_medicines
Chrystal Toop is an Indigenous counsellor, author and community educator. She is a founder of collectives and Blackbird Medicines, a plant and land-based spiritual and cultural wellness practice recently mentioned in Chatelaine magazine and Blackwood Gallery’s 14th edition of The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. A public speaker and grassroots organizer sought out for her lived expertise, Chrystal shares insights as an intergenerational residential school survivor and registered social services worker.
Gab Griffith @yourqueerdoula
Hi, my name is Gab and I am your queer doula !
I am a full spectrum doula and educator who prioritizes support and education for queer and trans community that is sex and kink postive. I help people get informed and feel empowered along their reproductive journey by providing fact based information for you and your family to make the choices that work. I believe that choice, consent, courage, community and care are the foundation of all reproductive care education. In this space you will learn about the different stages of reproductive health and care though a trauma informed, sex postive and queer lens !
Learn more:
instagram.com/yourqueerdoula
twitter.com/yourqueerdoula
facebook.com/yourqueerdoula
gabriellegriffith.com
Javiera Aviles-Saez @theradiantdoula
Javi serves their community in Sarnia, Ontario as a full-spectrum intersectional doula and childbirth educator. They are a single parent to a 4-year-old. Javi is latine, born and raised in Chile, and existed in Canada for the last 9 years after immigrating with their family.
They are autistic and identify as non-binary, and their work is largely focused on creating accessible and inclusive resources, both locally and online, for new and expectant parents; including lactation support spaces, lactation classes, parent drop-ins, and their online course, Radiant Birthing.
Javi volunteers their time offering support to parents who have experienced domestic violence and/or are navigating interactions with CPS by providing education on their rights, advocacy, and the resources available to them.
Javi also volunteers as a community representative with their local Children’s Aid Society, where they provide input to the Board of Directions in their decisions and policies, specifically focusing on inclusion and decolonization.
Karla Villanueva Danan @kmvdanan
Karla Villanueva Danan (she/siya) a Pinay settler, with roots in Pampanga, Pangasinan and Nueva Ecija. Born and raised in Mohkinstsis (Calgary, Alberta) and now living in Tkaronto (Toronto, Ontario), she completed her Bachelor of Arts in International Relations and French at the University of Calgary. Karla has worked and volunteered with several not-for-profit organizations supporting social services, settlement & immigration, community mental health, and most recently arts & culture. Karla has led successful grassroots campaigns and worked on provincial and federal electoral campaigns. As an artist, Karla wrote and directed her first short film, JEZEBEL (2018), as a love letter to her mother and the complexity of growing up as Pinay in the diaspora. By day, she works in government relations with the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).
king yaa @queerbirthworker
king yaa (always lowercase, thank you!), pronouns are they/them/king! king yaa is a genderqueer person of trans masculine experience and their sexuality is queer AF. Their Blackness is their superpower!
king is an intersectional feminist and their work centers queer, trans, and non-binary folx well-being through full spectrum of life experiences, including grief & loss and sex & pleasure. They also train intentional health and wellness practicioners on developing the competencies to care for and to create safer and inclusive practices for queer, trans and gender diverse people.
king yaa supports folx of all gender identities, sexual orientations in all bodies to have the audacity to intentionally & unapologetically have compassion for self, in all their complexities, as a radical act of taking up space and insisting on themselves. They are invested in decolonizing health and queering up reproductive justice, as well as, the collective healing and liberation of queer, trans and nonbinary folx, especially People of the Global Majority, aka BI&POC.
Learn more:
kingyaa.co.za
instagram.com/queerbirthworker
facebook.com/queerbirthworker
Mauriene Tolentino @maurienejean
Mauriene (they/she) is a queer Pinay with roots in Surigao, Bohol, and Pampanga. Their family migrated, settled, and now lives on Turtle Island, in what is colonially called Scarborough, Ontario. They are a researcher, community organizer, and policy analyst. Mauriene's work is rooted in decolonial, abolitionist, and anti-racist foundations with a focus on the role of policies and systems in health equity and migrant justice. Her labour of love is dedicated to structural changes for collective healing and liberation.
Currently, they are a researcher at Wellesley Institute, and a member of the Health Network for Uninsured Clients based in the Greater Toronto Area.
Meg Pirie @inclusive.care.doula.services
Meg Pirie (she/her) is a Full Spectrum Doula and Certified Cornerstone Postpartum Birthworker. Settled in Treaty 2 and Treaty 6 territory, (so-called London, Ontario, Canada), Meg supports all bodies, identities and outcomes through the full spectrum of reproductive experiences, grounding her practice in anti-racism, consent, and compassion. She is especially passionate about supporting birthing people through pregnancy and infant loss, providing affirming and tender holistic care that holds space for grief in its many forms.
When she is not doula-ing or parenting, Meg is in school pursuing her Masters of Social Work and yelling about late-stage capitalism. An avid reader and writer who tries to get outdoors as much as possible with her family, she rides her bike everywhere, loves carbs, and loves her partner and kids even more than carbs. In case you were wondering, Meg is a Virgo Sun/Gemini Moon/Scorpio Rising.
Learn more:
Inclusive Care Doula Services
@inclusive.care.doula.services
Molly Dutton-Kenny @molly_duttonkenny
Molly Dutton-Kenny (she/her) is a Registered Midwife in Milton, Ontario. Trained in the USA in community homebirth midwifery, she now makes Canada her home with her loving family. She supports education for midwifery students through National Midwifery Institute, and community education around full spectrum pregnancy loss and abortion, and midwifery-based management and support of these experiences, centering home and holistic medicine as options for most people.
She is also a member of the Abortion Care Network and the National Abortion Federation, and has served on the hotline for Action Canada for Sexual Health & Rights and on the Board of Choice in Health clinic in Toronto.
Learn more:
mollyduttonkenny.com
Piyêsiw Crane @apiscikahkakis
Piyêsiw Crane(they/them) is a Nehiyaw/Dene queer disabled indigenous full spectrum birthworker. Their lived experiences of growing up in the foster care system and living with a disability along with many other life journeys has led them to a passion for disability justice and birthwork. Focusing heavily on providing safe accessible care for disabled pregnant people while also educating non disabled birthworkers to be better allies and further intersectionalize their work.
Piyesiw also has a passion for inclusive sexual health education aimed towards indigenous communities and indigenous youth, along with environmental activism and harm reduction.
Ekosi.
Sunshine Johnson @enby.sunshine
My chosen name is Sunshine Johnson and I’m a nonbinary transgender person born and raised on Treaty 13 land on what’s referred to as Ontario. I would describe my career role as a de-colonial, gender expansive queer educator who focuses on navigating systemic barriers and community care in response to undergoing one’s gender transcending journey. I am of Afro descent and that has a huge impact on how I see gender. Outside of my role as an educator, I am a disabled, Black, trans, queer community member who loves visual art, craft, music, swimming and sport.
Vanessa Fareau @mother.of.four.daughters
Vanessa (she/her), is a mother of four daughters, grandmother, spoken word poet, full spectrum doula and yoga teacher.
Vanessa is also a community activist who works with the Criminalization and Punishment Education Project and The Bridge Engagement Centre. She is very passionate about every birth and babies and she’s also very passionate about bringing awareness and advocating for the injustices in the health care and correctional systems.
Anna Balagtas @pocketdoula
Kamusta! Ako si Anna Balagtas (she/they) and I'm a Queer + Pinay femme radical birthworker, project doula, educator, communications creative, and community organizer.
I'm the founder of Pocket Doula and I support emerging careworkers and reproductive health organizations in radicalizing and decolonizing their practice through heart-centered mentorships, queer reproductive justice, and community organizing. In my work, I use creative and collective means to disrupt and dismantle the many systems of oppression that hinder our liberation.
My deepest joy comes from witnessing our communities thrive through community care, mutual aid, and abolition work.
I take care in understanding there is anti-oppression work to be upheld in all facets of reproductive care and am committed to learning how to hold accountable the systems and complexes that continue to harm systematically underserved folks - especially 2Spirit, queer, trans, non-binary, and gender non-conforming BIPGM (Black, Indigenous, People of the Global Majority) folks.