Baby Blankets in Africa

Have you dreamt about bringing your first baby home from the hospital? Do you already have children and remember how soft and snuggly and warm you wanted them to be every second of every day when they were tiny? Now can you imagine having to bring your brand new baby home in a plastic baggy because you can't afford even one little baby blanket?

Let me tell you about a hospital in Africa and a brand new project that is trying to help.

This hospital has the largest maternity section of any hospital in the world. They have 26,000 babies born there every year - that amounts to over 70 babies every day. Many of the mothers who come are from the townships. In case you aren't familiar with the townships, let me share a little about them with you. These are the communities, if you can call them that, where the people live in structures made out of sheets of tin, both for the walls and the roof. The insides of the walls are lined with scrap pieces of cardboard for insulation. The shack usually has what passes for a bed and some sort of platform on which they cook. A place to put their clothes and a little trinket or two completes their home. Occasionally the family will have managed to buy one or two pieces of furniture. If this is the case, there are only a couple of feet between the pieces of furniture, so in essence what they have is a "room" with literally, wall-to-wall furniture. Their entire home is about 10 feet by 18 feet or maybe a little larger...

Most of them have no electricity, no heat, and no light except for candles or oil lamps. Occasionally the shacks have a few feet of ground around them, but most of the time they are either touching each other or just a few inches apart. The government pays each of these families just enough to sustain life. Anything else above mere survival the family has to scrape together on their own.

When the expectant mothers from the townships, and poor mothers from other places within the city, make it to the hospital to give birth, they deliver the baby and after four hours they are forced to leave their "room" at the hospital and go out in the hall and sit on a hard, narrow bench until they leave the hospital. Some of the mothers have nothing in which to put the baby so some of them leave with the baby in a plastic bag. Yes, a plastic bag...The thought of a new infant going home in a plastic bag makes me sick at heart. --written by Mike Wright

Mike and Dawn Wright are the parents of one of my dear friends. They are currently serving a mission in Africa where Dawn and is spending all of her spare time sewing blankets and little hats for these new little babies. I wish I could organize some sort of virtual quilting bee where we could all get together and sew blankets to send to this hospital, unfortunately the cost of fleece here is much more expensive than it is there and much of what gets mailed over there ends up stolen.

Because it only costs about $1.50 to make one blanket and little cap, the best alternative they have found for those who want to help is to mail money to the woman in charge of Dawn's accounts while she's in Africa. That way she can draw the funds straight from the account and there is no mailing to Africa involved. This is a small operation so there are no overhead costs. 100% of any money they receive will go directly to buying the fleece to make the blankets.

I hope you've noticed that I've tried hard to fill this blog with actions that aren't entirely about money, but I'm going to make an exception this time because unless you want to travel all the way to Africa, sending money is the only way to help these brand new little babies go home wrapped in a blanket instead of a plastic bag and I can vouch for this project personally.

Here is the blog address if you want to read more: http://mikerdawn.blogspot.com. The entry about starting the blanket project is Sept 7.


WHAT YOU CAN DO:

• Consider mailing money for blanket supplies to:

Amy Allsop
892 Woodstream Place
Eagle, ID 83616

• Spread the word by adding the button at the top of this post to your website. All you have to do is copy and paste the code at the bottom onto your site and it will publish a button linking back here!

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