What is Bilma?

Bilateral Matters Foundation - also known as BILMA Foundation - is a Dutch organisation that is initiating

health care projects in Southern Ethiopia - SNNPR = Southern Nations, Nationalities and
People’s Region.

Our goals

• Development of local expertise, in particular the training of midwives
• A Feasibility Study around the need for surgical training of midwives (executing ceasareans) 

Our intake

Principally we cooperate only with local organisations to enhance efficacy of the local health care structure.

Our foundation is cooperation with the SNNP Regional Heath Bureau in Hawassa, the capital of the Southern State,

Financially we also cooperate with the Dutch organisation “Stichting Adopteer een Vroedvrouw“ which is supporting the training of two of our students.

Our project to train midwives in remote areas

You can download a comprehensive document about our project here

At the end of the year 2014 six students started a three training to become a midwife at a regular governmental training facility – a Health Science College in two different places. Every year six new students will be admitted
for training. Candidates will be selected for their specific place of origin.
This indicates that they will be selected from places where at this moment no midwife is yet allocated.

The selection of candidates is organized by the SNNP Regional Health Bureau, that also will be responsible for later employment as a health care worker in the Southern part of the SNNPR. Our first student has already graduated
in August, and three other students will graduate in December 2017.

In the meantime 18 students are trained in our porject (20 students next year) at training facilities in two bif Zones (South Omo en Bench Maji).
In no other way – without our stipendium – not, or hardly any student would be trained originating from these two Zones.

Almost all students speak another language - their ‘native speech’.
There are more than 60 different languages spoken in the SNNPR. On school they learned to speak and write in Amharic language; the common language for training of all Ethiopian students. The particular advantage in this project is
that all trained midwives now speak the language of the pregnant women that they are going to treat.

At the end of the year 2017 four of our students will graduate. They are going to work in the place of origin as first employed midwife in that position.