The aim was to create a resource for expectant parents, especially women, to expand their knowledge and capacities with high-quality adult learning online antenatal courses. The courses should be suited for text-to-audio apps, the visual /auditive material subtitled or transcripted. The project also aimed at increasing the capacities of the partner organizations in providing free, high-quality, low threshold, online adult education courses that meet the needs of all users, including those who are hearing impaired, with a special regard to “parents approved” tips and evidence-based content around maternal mental-health. Mother Hood (MH) could benefit from Roda’s experience, who created their first e-learning platform during the COVID-crisis and were ready to share their experiences and know-how, so that MH could start building a platform without “beginner's mistakes”, learning from what Roda had already done and what had been proven successful. At the same time, our organizations wanted to build capacity by sharing experience on working as parental advocacy organizations in different areas of Europe, on working with parents, ideas on ways to convey useful and important knowledge and information to parents and scaling advocacy work.
Both organizations are in close contact with new parents and parents to be, in Germany and Croatia, respectively. New parents frequently pointed out the gaps in the established birth preparation courses: the lack of certain information and how some given information was misinterpreted by parents. Hence the felt need to create something to fill those gaps and flank the classical midwife led birth preparation courses. Even more often did we hear about how new parents felt underinformed and overwhelmed by the first weeks with a newborn. Whenever we spoke to people we heard how valuable “approved parental knowledge” was to them. This approach is also supported in existing research (cfr. Pålsson et al (2018) DOI: 10.1891/1058-1243.27.3.163) Hence the concrete need for high-quality, peer-approved information and orientation for parents around pregnancy, childbirth and the first time with a newborn. Mother Hoods’s goal was to create such courses, as inclusive as possible, whilst RODA’s goal was to make post-COVID adaptations to the most attended course and adjust video materials for people with impaired hearing. All courses needed a reliable and easy to use Learning Management System that also allowed for future development.