Supermodel's Super Fight For Women

 

What does a supermodel do when she leaves her modeling days behind? If that supermodel is Christy Turlington Burns, she creates a non-profit organization to help women around the world.The mother of two founded Every Mother Counts in 2010 to combat mother mortality rates around the world. The organization already has a strong message on the web, but she's looking to engage a larger audience with today's launch of her official Facebook timeline. Why is maternal health so important to the former model? She experienced the trauma of a difficult labor herself." I had a great first pregnancy and delivery, but never progressed to the final stage of labor — my placenta had to be extracted from the wall of my uterus, which leads to postpartum hemorrhage," Turlington Burns told SheKnows in 2011. "In minutes, I went from feeling empowered to helpless and it was also excruciatingly painful. But I was lucky because my midwife and the OB who backed her worked so well together. Thousands of women with the same complication die."Every Mother Counts reports that a woman dies from childbirth complications every 90 seconds.

 

Pregnancy is also the leading killer of women ages 15-19 in developing nations."Once I learned the global statistics, I had to do what I could to help to improve maternal health and reduce preventable maternal deaths," she said.In addition to the new social media platform, Turlington Burns is teaming up with some of her musician friends to release a compilation album at Starbucks around the country.

 

Every Mother Counts 2012 — on sale throughout the month of May — includes tracks from David Bowie, Sting, Faith Hill and Lauryn Hill. Her good friend, U2's Bono, also contributed an acoustic version of "Original of the Species" for the album."I went to friends first, as I did with the first CD," Turlington Burns told Rolling Stone of getting musicians on board for the album."Bono and Chris Martin were great supporters of the project the first time around, and when I knew I wanted to include men on this album they were obvious choices. They are also both fathers to daughters. Others, such as Patti Smith and Rita Wilson, I've known for a long time, and some, like Edie Brickell and Paul Simon, I only met briefly but was a huge admirer. I generally wanted a diverse group of artists who were parents, or in the case of Edward Sharpe, who will be soon. We wanted to reach a broad audience on this issue with this particular project and with a range of perspectives."

Images courtesy Josh Estey/Every Mother Counts