What began as a caregiver training for a few orphanages in southern India has blossomed into something of a phenomenon.  Now, in less than six years, HHI is tipping the massive milestone of reaching 100,000 people!  We have trained mothers, fathers, health workers, midwives, day care and orphanage workers. They, in turn, are providing better care, more love and improved health for the children they care for.

Yesterday, as the world’s population tipped seven billion people, HHI hosted a training for 14 Integrated Child Development Service (ICDS) workers (similar to US Head Start teachers) in Sanahula village and two additional mommy trainings in the remote area of Orissa, India.

Here’s Laura, HHI’s founder and executive director, with HHI trainers and the ICDS workers, all from different villages in India. Each one of them will be able to take what they’ve learned back to their village and share it with coworkers, families of the children they care for, their own family and friends and the list goes on. This is how HHI’s ripple effect has enabled us to reach far more than the 100,000 people we’ve directly impacted!

Laura was able to celebrate with local mommies, ICDS workers and HHI’s trainers yesterday. She’s also hosting HHI’s annual Trainer’s Conference before heading off to Singapore to present at The Asia-Pacific Regional Conference on Early Childhood Development.

Check out this video from Laura to see HHI in action:

Read about HHI’s work and impact, from three different perspectives, from three different continents.

Our thanks to the women who shared their stories and to Laura Barker for capturing and writing them and Kara North for putting them into such a beautiful publication!

If you would like a copy of this booklet, please email us your name and mailing address. We would be happy to mail copies for free within the US.

Here is a story from HHI’s colleagues in northern Uganda on the simple power of knowledge and how that led one baby to have a MUCH better day!

Written by Harriet, of Medical Teams International in Lira, Uganda:

Our field team was working with the health worker from Ogur Health Center as they led a workshop for mother’s about immunizations. We were then called upon to sensitize the mothers to early childhood development and we taught the well loved topic and practice of Baby Massage.  On hearing the importance of Baby Massage on babies who find it difficult to pass stool regularly, one mother whose baby’s name is Tracy raised her hand to inquire whether this would apply to her baby’s situation, the baby had spent two days crying because of stomach pains caused by inability to pass out stool. The mother was frustrated with all her efforts to manage the case by giving her daughter tomato juice as her neighbors advised, among so many other home remedies.

I simply assured her to observe what would happen from the baby massage.  We improvised a soft “bed”, I prepared the baby and started stroking her with some vegetable oil.  I started massaging Tracy’s legs, calling out her beautiful name, reached to the arms and softly to the stomach.  In all the strokes she beamed with smiles to the loud laughter from all the observers who could see little Tracy’s joy and comfort and could hear her farting each time I did the tummy strokes on her belly! When I handed her back to her mother, she was cried to come back to me.  The mother dressed her up and by the time it was Tracy’s turn for immunizations she had started to pass stool. The mother said that this was a miracle and asked why she did not know this before.  The mothers have proved this to be a very interesting and practical cure, with no side effects.

We are happy to hear that Tracy and her mother both found such relief!

I wrote a post on November 10th with the dream that HHI could touch the lives of another 10,000 children in the last 2 months of the year. Well, we did it!

Our partners in Uganda, Medical Teams International, were able to successfully lead HHI trainings in 145 villages. They trained 4,507 parents – men and women – and they are each caring for an average of 2-3 children below the age of five, meaning that HHI reached another 9,014 to 13,521 children!!!

The team reported: “in the first week of the training, parents and children were unkempt, but in the last week; when summarizing with baby massage and baby cues, hygiene and neatness was at its maximum signifying that there was adoption and putting to practice what had been learnt!!!! And the peer educators vowed to continue training those that require the knowledge during their own free time!!!”

These are just the first of the outcomes, and they are of huge significance! The parents stated that they enjoyed learning new information and they liked it even better when it comes via someone who is of their own community, which is how they received HHI’s education.

Bravo Uganda!!!!

A three-part series highlighting different perspectives of women involved with Hands to Hearts International.

Part 3: Ugandan community leaders Florence Okun and Norah Awio use the skills they learned during the HHI training when caring for their own families.

By Laura Barker

“To be a child in Uganda is not easy,” explains Norah Awio. Especially in the north, where decades of war have forced millions of people into refugee camps, being a child means having to endure countless hardships. Because “children. . . have no right to speak,” sexual and physical abuse is common. They work hard fetching water, collecting firewood, digging, and selling agricultural products. Their families often lack the funds or proper clothing to send them to school. In a place where “child labour is the order of growing up,” the education and training provided to parents and caretakers alike through Hands to Hearts is refreshing and widely welcomed.

Norah, 36, and her husband live with their five children and several more dependents in a modest one-room home in Kampala, Uganda. She works six days a week as a legal officer for the Locan Rebe Women’s Group, resting only on Sundays, when she attends church and catches up on housework. As a leader in her community, Norah works to mobilize women and tries to promote HHI training. It’s a difficult task, as many Ugandans are skeptical of help from outsiders, assuming it will cost them money to participate in their programs. But Norah knows firsthand the positive effects of HHI’s services and works to recruit more women whom she knows will also benefit. Although these women might initially be wary, once they attend the training, they too sing HHI’s praises. Some women can’t stop talking about it and soon begin to recommend HHI to their own friends and family members.

Florence Okun is another community leader and past participant of the HHI trainings. Her grown son is now studying at Makerere University in Kampala, but she continues to care for many people in her house: her brother, her mother who is paralyzed, and 8 other children that she has taken in. Some are orphans and others are the children of family members who are unable to care for them. “I decided to take some of these orphans because their parents are extremely poor and single mothers,” she says. “Secondly, I have a kind heart and. . . only one son.” Florence, 42, is also a member of Locan Rebe, a group formed by internally displaced women from northern Uganda “as a result of war and poor living conditions.” She is the Local Council 1 for her zone, a low-level government position responsible for general cleanliness in the area. In addition, she owns and manages a small hotel in the city.

Florence HHI’s new video – Share this YouTube with your Friends!

Like Norah, Florence is very appreciative of the early childhood development education she received through HHI and says she acts differently with her family because of it. She spends more time with her children, who are now more likely to tell her stories and bring their friends home. She learned that children develop all their senses as they grow and that they “require love, close attention, and encouragement by [the] parent.”

Norah, too, has learned to make more time for her children. “I used [to] think that giving children food was enough for them,” she says, “but during HHI trainings I learned that having time for your child [is] very important. . . and you become not only a parent to that child but also a close friend.” Because her work is exhausting, she never felt she had enough time to give to her children. But now she says she carries the younger ones around “with love” and chats with the older ones about how they feel and what is on their minds.

In addition to changing the ways in which they respond to their children, both Norah and Florence emphasized the positive change HHI has brought to their community as a whole. The women have become closer through discussions about the best childrearing practices. Being involved with Hands to Hearts, they said, has “restored their relationships.” “HHI brought oneness in our community,” says Norah. Florence agrees, concluding that “the level of love has increased.” In a country where the atrocities of war have touched the lives of every citizen, this is indeed a powerful statement.

~Unknown