Walk in Love International: September 2014

Walk In Love International

Newsletter - September 2014
( stay up to date on what is going on at WIL inTanzania please friend us on FB, WalkinLove Tanzania)

Walk in Love International is a small grassroots NGO registered in the USA and Tanzania, East Africa. Walk In Love (WIL) was founded by an American woman, Aubree Packard, who moved to Arusha, Tanzania with her husband. She volunteered with several organizations until she decided to start her own NGO. She let the community tell her what they needed instead of imposing western ideas on the community. The community told her what they needed and how their needs were not being met by the immediate organizations working in the area.

Many of the NGO's working in Arusha were only placing a band aid over the real problems. There are a lot of baby homes in Arusha, too many. The baby homes are merely placing a band-aid over the real issues. These homes will keep babies for two years and then place them back into the same circumstances they came from or just send them on to big kid orphanges. They do very little to either help a family keep the baby or help a family prepare for the arrival for the baby after two years.

We are not saying the orphanages are doing anything wrong. They also have a mission and that mission includes the immediate needs of the babies. They do provide safe places for babies to live and grow. They are certainly saving children's lives and providing a service to the community but the issues are much deeper then providing a place for babies to live.

One of the real problems is lack of medical care for pregnant women which leads to a high maternal death rate. When a mother dies the family can rarely afford to take care of a baby so the baby gets placed in the orphanages. This is not because the family does not want to keep the baby. Would you choose to put your son/daughter/grandbaby/ niece or nephew in an orphanage if you could keep them? It is no different here. I have heard the cries of these families while making the only decision they can, handing their baby over to a baby home.

WIL has given the family members a choice to keep their son/daughter/ grandchild/niece/nephew. We have opened up a community center where we offer FREE daycare and preschool where the children are given three meals per day. This gives the family an opportunity to earn money while the baby is at a safe place. We also give families of very young babies formula and monitor all the children to make sure they are healthy and growing. The WIL Community and Child Development Center is also a place where we offer free training and classes to educate the families and help them to gain employement. We offer micro loans and business counseling to any family that wants to start up their own small business. We give them the choice to keep their babies. They will never have to walk into a baby orphanage and hand their baby over. We have several children in our care that the family got to walk OUT of the baby orphanage with their children. We support them in making that decision and we are on the other side helping them to put their family back together. We recently celebrated two years working on the ground in Tanzania and we are constantly reassured that we are on the right path. Emmy and babies like Emmy remind us everyday:)

Meet Emmy

Emmy's first week at the center

Emmy's mother sadly passed away when Emmy was only six months old. Her father, Edward, and his mother tried to take care of Emmy. They tried to feed her but she would not take cows milk. They were desperate to not have to take Emmy to an orphanage until one day Emmy went so lethargic that Edward no longer thought he had a choice. He contacted a friend of WIL and told her that he would have to take Emmy to a baby orphanage or she would die. This friend, Felicity, knew how badly Edward wanted to keep his beloved daughter in his home so she directed him to WIL instead. Once they reached WIL Emmy did not look like she would live so the quick thinking staff took her immediately to the hospital. Once she was released from the hospital and brought back to WIL, a beautiful thing happened. One of our nannies, Julianna, was breastfeeding her son, Emma, and took Emmy and breastfed her as well. Emmy's stomach was so tiny that she did not want to eat at first, Julianna had to force this tiny baby to feed for the first couple of weeks. When Emmy was not at the center formula was provided for her to eat in the evenings and on weekends and slowly this tiny, lathargic baby started to gain weight, she started to smile, she started to giggle, she started to hit her milestones. She is now one year old. She is chubby and she is happy! She loves to talk and stand up on her own. She is with her family that loves her. She is one of the lucky ones. She and all the babies like her are why was have chosen the mission to keep families together.

Emmy today:)

May 2014, after one month at the center

June 20th

We were also able to help a Mama bring her son home. She had to leave him with her mother in a village two days journey away from Arusha because she could no longer feed him. After two years of being away from her son we were able to help them reunite. Through micro loans, business counseling and a part time job Mama Frank was able to save the money needed to bring her son home! They are now living happily together in Arusha and Frank now attends the WIL Center.

New Programs:

Welcome Home

Opening January 2015

Our current programs are in place to keep the babies in the families once the mother has passed away. Now our new programs will help to keep the mother healthy throughout, during and after giving birth. Our new programs will also start combatting another real problem: young women abandoning their babies. Once again, the problem isn't that babies don't have a place to go, it is that the young mother does not have an option to keep her baby due to over whelming poverty and often times shame.

Young girls abandon their babies because they have no jobs, they have no hope, they have no money to take care of their babies. They are often times kicked out of their family homes or are already living on the streets when they find out they are pregnant. They have not had the education and empowerment to make a choice not to get pregnant. Many women, whether they are educated or not, will get pregnant because Tanzania is a male dominated society and too often women are raped or have turned to prostitution as a means to survive. Once the girl is pregnant the man is no where to be found. She has few options and the one that will usually win is abandoning the child. These girls usually choose to abandon in places where the babies can be found alive, but there are also far too many cases of babies being found in pit latrines (toilets), bodies of water and buried alive. These girls do not even have the option of taking the babies to the baby homes (even though this is where they are brought if they are found alive) because abandoning your baby is illegal in Tanzania and if caught the young girls will go to prison.

What if she had a choice?

What if there was a place for her to go to give birth to her baby safely? A place where she could live and get an education? A safe place for her and her baby to thrive? What if we, WIL, gave these young women a choice? Well, that is exactly what we are planning on doing. January 2015 we will open up a home, Welcome Home, for young mothers. We will give them a choice to keep their babies. They do not have to abandon them in the hopes someone will find them. They get to keep their baby.

What if we could do something to help reduce the maternal death rate?

We believe we can. We will hold monthly women's health classes in our communities and the surrounding communities. We will give these women the education they need to deliver healthy babies and have a healthy delivery. We will even hand out and educate people on how to use birthing kits (in areas where there is no access to a hospital or clinic) and other medicines designed to help them survive even if there are complications. We will do prenatal health checks and provide women with prenatal vitamins. We will help them to design a birth plan and what they need to do if the baby comes early or if they are having symptoms that something is wrong with the baby. Through fundraising we hope to help any women expecting complications to give birth at the private hospital. Our maternity team will include a doula, midwife and a nurse. We will also have a doctor who will help our when needed.

In order for us to open Welcome Home in January 2015 we need to secure funding to run the home. This will be completely separate funding from the WIL Community Center. We will rent a small home near the WIL Center where the girls will live with the babies up to one year. They will receive an education and vocational training while living at the home. Every girl will have an individualized plan on how to help her succeed. More details coming soon! To learn more about Welcome Home (mission, vision, phases) please follow this link, Welcome Home.

But for now we are looking for WH monthly sponsors! We have estimated a cost of $1000 per month to run the house with 3 girls and their babies living in the house.

We are estimating:

Rent: at $400 (including water and electricity)

Staffing: $200 ( guard, house mama, part time social worker)

Transportation: $100 (to and from doctors appts, to and from school, etc)

Doctor's appt: $100

Misc: $100 toiletries, clothing, bedding, ect

Food: $100

Please use the link below to become a Welcome Home monthly sponsor and to truly change the lives of our youngest mamas. All donations are tax deductible.

Thank you for making a decision to make a difference!

WH Monthly Sponsor Options

The only remaining monthly cost for Welcome Home is the necessary coordination and management to make the WH projects as successful as we know they can be. Christina Reinke, an American woman who has recently joined the WIL team, will be an essential part of overseeing the everyday work of the Welcome Home programs. She has a Bachelors of Social Work with minors in English and Justice and Peace Studies from the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, MN. She has also completed courses in Doula training and done extensive research on maternal health and maternal death rate in Tanzania. She lived and worked in Tanzania for two months in 2013. She has agreed to come to Tanzania to not only research and develop these programs but she will stay long enough to see them through and to work out any kinks that might come up. She will stay for two years and in that time she will develop, run and train a Tanzanian staff to eventually take over this project. She will live and work on site at Welcome Home. We would like to offer Christina a stipend to sustain her while she is living in Tanzania. This stipend is included in the $300 monthly costs for the coordination and management of Welcome Home projects. The development and success of Welcome Home is dependent upon productive program coordination and project management. If you are interested in supporting the monthly management of Welcome Home, please use the donate button and specify the amount that is to be used towards the program management and coordination. Please use the 'Subscribe" button below to become a monthly management of WH supporter. General Welcome Home monthly sponsorship donations will not be used towards the monthly management.

Thank you!

What's new at the WIL Community and Child Development Center???

Updates!

Teacher Angel has 11 years experience in an English-Medium private school. We are so happy to have her teaching our children at the WIL center.

We have been very busy updating and improving the center. Take a look and see for yourself! Updates and Improvement at the WIL Center in pictures! We now have a lunch room complete with tables and benches, shelves for centers, cubbies for each of the children to put there personal items, a changing table, push walkers for all the babies that are learning to walk, a book shelf full of the book collected by Blake!, a chalk board and desks for the preschool (donated by Knob Noster Christian Church VBS lead by Peggy Miller), and a preschool full of supplies (donated by Lora McGinn and carried over by Lori Covington), loads of needed medicine for the children and our maternal health program (donated by Ben and Lori Covington) and an amazing preschool teacher! We have been so blessed with wonderful supporters who

collect much needed items, hold fundraisers and who support us monthly. We have been able to make this center into a daycare/preschool that could hold up anywhere in the world!!

From April 30th post:

I have to give a HUGE shout out to my cousin Blake. He held a book drive at his school for the WIL Library and brought in over 300 fantastic books for children of all ages. He even did a presentation in front of the whole school to tell them about WIL and what we are doing in Tanzania. Thanks Blake, you are one amazing little man!!!

Our changing table made my volunteer, Derek

WIL Volunteers!

AnnaJane came to volunteer with WIL for two weeks.
She is also Zye's sponsor!

Bethan and Dan from Katz Volunteer Adventure.

Nikki teaching her course at WIL. Thirty-five women graduated and earned a certificate.

We are honored to have Nikki and Derek Fortune volunteer with WIL for the second year in a row! Nikki has created Childcare Course that is culturally sensitive and relavent for the childcare workers and parents in Tanzania. She taught this course over a two week time span complete with classroom time and practical work everyday. Women from all walks of life attended this course and we are hoping they will take what they learned home to their children and to they childcare jobs. Thank you Nikki for sharing your knowledge to so many women in Tanznia and to all our WIL Nannies! While Nikki was teaching Derek was busy building! With help from Reuben and our boys they made a changing table, benched and a sensory table for our toddlers and special needs children.

Ashley Ferro, return volunteer, at Emmy's baptism

Ilse volunteered for 3 months!

Sensory table made by Derek

Meet Innocent!

Our goal is to welcome Innocent and another young girl who also has CP into the WIL Center January 2015. Please consider sponsoring Innocent.

You do not see many special needs children or adults in Tanzania because mama's or families will often times kill the baby or let them starve to death. We are so honored to have women in our community and groups that have chosen to keep their children with special needs. They have chosen a tougher life. They have chosen to work harder, to be shunned from their families and communities, they have chosen to love their children no matter what. Walk In Love is all about giving people choices and we now want to give more women with a special needs child a choice. We want to start a special needs programs to not only support the children but the brave mama's who have chosen life for their children.

Post from August 14th:

We are thankful at WIL today because we met a special little man named Innocent. He is 4 years old and has cerebral palsy. We are happy because from this day forward we can help improve his life and his mothers. Dolly has already taught Maria how to help Innocent breathe better and what to do if he chokes. Innocent and his mother, Maria, came from a village far away from Arusha 6 months ago hoping to get better care for Innocent. That we also the last time they saw or heard from Innocents father. They are living in a one room mud house with 4 other people. Maria has done a great job taking care of Innocnet and he is such a happy guy! He got to participate in music time at the center today and he smiled so big we got to see his beautiful dimples!! Maria will take the two week child are course starting next week. While we are figuring out a long term plan for Maria and Innocent we will be helping with basic needs such as food and rent. Our goal is to have Innocent in the center by January but in order for us to do that we need a sponsor for him. He will require a nanny that will be trained by the lovely Dolly. We will also need to build him some special furniture and toys to have at the center and at home. We are looking for a sponsor or group to sponsor Innocent for $100 per month to cover salary for a trained nanny, food and special equipment we need to buy. Could you help us being Innnocent into an environment that he will thrive in! He loved music time and I know he will make friends at the center and experience so many different things that he would never get the chance to if he were to just stay at home, most likely by himself as his mother struggle to find work. F you are interested in literally bringing Innocent from the darkness of a mud hut and into the loving light of the WIL Center please email Aubree at walkinlovetanzania@gmail.com

Are you interested in sponsoring a child!!

We recently welcomed 10 new children into the WIL free daycare and preschool. That means we have 10 children who are in need of a sponsor! We cannot accept any new children from our ever growing waiting list until these children get sponsors. When you sponsor a child for $40 per month you are providing that child with three healthy meals per day, emergency medical treatment and school supplies and tuition.

Meet Our Children!

Continuing Education for the WIL Nannies!
All of our WIL Nannies have been through the childcare course taught by Nikki and had a refresher course this year. They have also been through a First Aid training course with Dolly and fire saftey with Neema. Neema attended a course in fire safety and prevention where she recieved a training certificate. We have also made the decision to Julianna to a six month course on childcare and Theresia to a two year college to earn her teaching certificate. We are so proud of them!

Julianna on her first day of school!

First Aid course with Dolly

Fundraising!!!

One Day of Pay Challenge!

One day’s salary can go a long way in Tanzania! For example: if you make $8 per hour, and you work 8 hours per day, you make $64 per day! That is more than enough money to support a child for an entire month at our WIL Center!

We are raising money to build furniture and toys to fill our center, to cover expenses for unsponsored children, to give micro-loans, to fund women empowerment groups, to cover medical expenses for staff and children, to fund educational costs not covered by sponsors, to provide staff education and continuing education, and to fund all outreach, emergency placement and food, transportation and other unexpected expenses that come up every month!

The donations from this fundraiser will allow us to help people in emergency situations as well as help us meet with families that we can help become self-sustaining. The women and children who attend our center will always be our first priority, and we count on this fundraiser to make sure we can continue helping the most vulnerable families in our area. We meet families in emergency situations on a regular basis. We buy them food, help with rent, provide emergency daycare and we work with them until they can provide a safe and healthy environment for themselves and their children. We need money set aside to use to buy food, formula, etc. to enable us to help families in emergency situations.

Every little bit helps! Thank you for donating and for working with us to make a difference in the lives of the women and children in Tanzania! Use the Donate Button below to donate your One Day of Pay!!

Other ways you can help:

Drop by our booth at First Fridays and purchase one of our handmade products! We are located at:
Across from Leedy Voulkos Art Center

2012 Baltimore Ave

Kansas City Missouri 64108