Nicole, Trinidad & Tobago
Working as a Board-Certified Breast Health Educator and Advocate for over two decades, has been life altering for me in so many ways.
I founded Ms. Brafit - a Social Enterprise focused on Bra and Mastectomy Fittings in 2002, determined to provide solutions that would deliver dignity, empathy and privacy to women.
Having recognised the gaps in education beyond a diagnosis, there was an opportunity to pay it forward and serve differently.
I understood that women and families were suffering due to lack of adequate information beyond surgical interventions, and I wanted to DO more and GIVE more.
The women we served represented diverse facets of our social landscape, and many were mothers. So, we were compelled to design education for intergenerational impact, that addressed multiple needs. Thus, incorporating a more inclusive model that would impact families and communities – cohesive and unified interventions, addressing the essential breast care needs for everyday comfort, confidence and care, beyond a diagnosis.
Through our extensive findings, we understood the intersectionality of gaps in the advancement of education that could have a wider impact, and we applied an innovative approach towards improving the experiences in the domain of general breast care, bra fitting, post-surgical care and breast esteem, amongst women and girls, at varied life stages and with varied breast health situations.
Women and girls were pained by their perceived limitations including awareness and access, which had a direct correlation to many emotional and psychosocial issues related to overall esteem. In turn, they sometimes made harmful choices to compensate for these perceived limitations.
Our solutions-driven focus led us to curate a collection of interventions that would add value to the breast care experience; by incorporating or developing educational programs, user friendly solutions, supplementary products, and self-care tools to address wider subject matters aligned to women’s health, empowerment and breast care. Over the years we have addressed the adaptation of culturally sensitive and globally relevant education programs, which have influenced our keynote addresses, workshops, seminars and bespoke programming.
Through our years of collective experience and interventions, our Social Enterprise has been considered as the premier resource and regarded as the thought-leaders in ALL THINGS BREASTS. Thus, becoming an integral part of the post-surgical arsenal for women following a mastectomy, elective or corrective breast surgeries and for general everyday bra comfort situations that would best benefit from specialist care.
Filling such gaps, ensured that our reach and activities were not confined to the traditional environments but to a wider cross-section, a more palpable experience and diverse formats, leading us to destinations, communities and collaborative initiatives, through our ability to supplement existing mainstream awareness programming with demographically relevant content.
Consensus throughout communities in which we served, attributed our interventions to a happier woman, more self-confident girls and, as a missing link in the crosscutting dialogues around breast empowerment, wellbeing and mental health. In 2012, we delivered an academic paper on the value of our interventions, in the rehabilitation of women in treatment - at the Oklahoma State University and over the years, we have shared our insights, thought-leadership and innovative responses on various platforms and academic spaces. Through the 2018 UNDP GEF Knowledge Fair in St. Lucia, our technical talk ‘The Course, The Care, The Cost’ addressed implications of Breast Cancer diagnoses in Small Island Developing Nations and the Global South.
Our commitment to empowerment, inclusive engagement, collaboration and social care helps to advance our goals of contributing to safe and sustainable cities, by adding value to patient care solutions. One example of our commitment to gender inclusion and collaboration was our 2018 partnership campaign #notjustgirltalk which saw active participation of the management and staff of Lonsdale Saatchi and Saatchi, collectively translating our gender justice dialogues into social action.
In 2015 and 2017 through study-abroad programming, medical students and faculty of Spelman College visited Ms. Brafit to engage in our bespoke knowledge exchange, which complemented their already solid academic pursuits. This experience allowed the students to connect the dots between the clinical situations presented and the world of innovative supplementary rehabilitative care.
Through passionate leadership, my unwavering collaborative spirit, and my keen social innovation lenses, coupled with my urgency to amplify change in the social care arena, I have been the recipient of esteemed global awards, fellowships and recognitions, all invested in catalysing my enhanced capacity and impact. These include US State Department IVLP, Vital Voices Fellowships, Government of India Leadership Fellowship - 2017, AFETT Social Entrepreneur of the Year Award - 2018, Inaugural Vital Voices Collective Action Award with Safecity - 2024, Inaugural CEO of Colour in Residence at University of the Pacific - 2021, as well as serving on panels and in advisory capacity to related communities.
To date, our education has been delivered via varied formats including in-person engagements on five continents. Our messages have been shared with thousands, multiple generations of families have been fitted through our Bra and Mastectomy Fitting consultancy and we have been part of numerous conversations addressing dignity, empowerment, prevention and social care in corporate, grassroots and academic spaces, all aimed at closing the care gap.
Our company watchwords: ‘everyday comfort, confidence and care, beyond a diagnosis’, keeps me grounded and guides our social impact through supporting each person we serve, in-person or via our virtual consultations. To us, comfort starts and ends with the first layer. We see dignity beginning with the foundation garment and our role is to provide the most comfortable and suitable foundation garments for everyone that entrusts us with their personal care.
To deliver change and close the care gap, we must start with the women and girls – those, who will potentially provide the first form of food for the newborn generations.