Amy Ellen Polk Memorial Scholarship
Application Period will open January 15, 2025
This scholarship was developed in memory of Amy Ellen Polk, a devoted wife, dedicated mother of two, talented transportation engineer, and passionate and outspoken advocate for a Takoma Park, Maryland-based birthing center.
The annual scholarship is awarded in the form of a tuition grant to attend a How to Start a Birth Center Workshop. An additional $500 is awarded for travel expenses if the recipient is attending an in-person workshop.
The workshop is offered in two formats:
Online course that you can complete at your own pace, in your own home
Two-day, in-person workshop. In 2025 the workshop will be offered September 10-11 in Portland, Oregon, immediately preceding the AABC Birth Institute
Learn more about the AABC How to Start a Birth Center Workshops at www.BirthCenters.org.
Scholarship Criteria
To be eligible for the scholarship you must be actively working on the development of a freestanding birth center in your community and demonstrate financial need. Applicants cannot have previously attended the How to Start a Birth Center Workshop or purchased the online workshop in the last three years. Scholarships must be used in the year they are awarded.
How to Apply
Individuals wishing to apply for consideration may complete an online application form addressing eligibility and responding to the following questions:
Why do you want to open a birth center?
What is your experience with birth centers?
Provide a timeline of your development process to open a birth center, and describe your progress.
What resources have you brought together towards your goal of establishing a birth center?
How do you plan to serve diverse communities and create equity?
Why do you need financial assistance to attend the AABC How to Start a Birth Center Workshop?
What topic of the AABC How to Start a Birth Center workshop are you looking forward to most?
Learn what makes a strong application.
All applications are blinded and assigned a number to reduce the chance of unconscious bias.
Questions? Contact us at admin@aabcfoundation.org or call 215-234-8068
About Amy Polk
Amy was a compassionate and intensely motivated woman who pursued her goals with confidence. "She was very high-energy; when she knew what she wanted, she just went and did it; ... when she set her mind to something, it was just going to happen," says her widower, John Robinette, adding that his wife's enthusiasm for a birthing center came from her experiences with a similar center in Bethesda, Maryland that has since closed.
"We had two fantastic birth experiences at the Maternity Center in Bethesda, and then it shut down," he said. "To have that option go away didn't seem right, so she set out to fix that problem. ... In some ways, it feels like Amy died in childbirth with this infant child in [the form of] the birth center."
Both of Robinette's and Polk's two sons, Adam and Brian were born at the Bethesda maternity center before it closed in 2007.
Amy envisioned a birth center that would provide individualized care in a home-like setting to women throughout the lifespan, from onset of menstruation, through the childbearing years, to menopause and beyond. She sought to create a birth center that would monitor the physical, psychological, and social well-being of the woman throughout the childbearing cycle; provide individualized education, counseling, and prenatal care, continuous hands-on assistance during labor and delivery, and postpartum support; and minimize technological interventions. This birth center would do nothing short of improving her community.
It is the hope of Amy’s friends, family and colleagues that this scholarship will empower other like-minded individuals to start birth centers in their own hometowns as well.
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