Give Where You Live: Meet Birth Roots

Portside’s 1% Back to Maine is proud to share it has granted Birth Roots with a $10,000 grant to expand community-based prenatal and postnatal programming and support for new and expectant parents.

Founded in 2004, Birth Roots is Maine’s first non-clinical perinatal 501(c)(3) based in Portland directly serving more than 1,000 families annually. Birth Roots creates a culture of support for parents throughout the critical window of early child development – beginning in pregnancy – with robust programming that emphasizes new parents' social, emotional, and non-clinical needs. Birth Roots believes that families and extended communities flourish by prioritizing parents’ deep need for belonging and perspective in early parenthood. Children and their parents emerge from the early development stages more resilient, confident, and connected. For more information, please visit birthroots.org and follow Birth Roots on Facebook and Instagram. 

Birth Roots is thrilled to have received a 2024 Portside 1% Back to Maine grant. This grant will help fund community-based perinatal programming and support for new and expectant parents in Maine, including the expansion of our Shared Identity program and increasing Maine families’ access to perinatal resources. 

Our Shared Identity program offers free, monthly, first-of-their-kind, facilitated groups to support the unique experience of parenting in an under-supported identity. Current pilot groups include: Black Motherhood, Queer Parents, Solo By Design Families, Talking Dads (supporting expectant and early fatherhood) and Neurodiversity in the Family (supporting neurodivergent parents and/or parents of neurodivergent children). 

In early 2023, Birth Roots broadened their commitment to bolstering perinatal resources by creating the Treetop, a community classroom at our Portland location. Since launch, the Treetop has been used by community partners for: birth classes, perinatal provider professional development, pregnancy support groups for Spanish-speakers, fatherhood preparation classes, mental health provider trainings, and as in-kind office space for a nonprofit serving fathers who have experienced infant loss.