In a tribal village, far down a dirt road in the rural district of Angul, Odisha, India, an HHI training was offered to all the mothers and grandmothers to join us to learn about early childhood development.  The response was fabulous, with more than 22 moms piling in, almost all had young infants, and a few had newborns snuggled close to their chests.

The moms were excited and surprised to have a training that would offer education and support for their role as caregivers/mothers, this was a new experience for them.  HHI is unique in offering parent education and even more so because of where and how we do this, that is in extremely remote areas with few resources.  And, while this village has been raising babies for generations, none of their babies came with instruction manuals (just like the rest of the world’s babies!) and they just do the best they know how.

They listened intently, soaking up the new information and merging it into their own knowing and practices.  It is always a joy when I get to witness an HHI training, I learn as much from the participants as they do from our trainers and the conversations that they spark with each other.

A special surprise that I got at this training though was from this grandmother. She was a village elder, born and raised within her tribe, in this small village.  She’s seen a lot in her years and she was a wealth of knowledge.  To my delight she had come to attend HHI’s training and she moved to sit next to me in the back of the room.  I was slightly daunted, thinking, “what could HHI possibly teach her?”.  But, she was very interested in the new information and all of the activities and she leaned over and said to me (via a translator), “Thank you. Thank you for coming to our village. This education is all new to our mothers and they need this, this will make them more intelligent and our children will benefit forever.”

Wow… I was humbled and honored to know the value she saw in HHI.  Thank you grandma!

Recently a group of mothers in Namibia gathered with their babies to participate in HHI’s first ever training in their country, all thanks to a young woman who was determined to make it happen.

Geri is from HHI’s hometown of Portland, OR, but she’s been living and working as a Peace Corps volunteer in rural Namibia for the last year plus. She speaks the language, offers support, training and friendship to all of her new community.  And not too long ago, she made reached out to Hands to Hearts and made a bold request, “please bring HHI to the families of my community.”

This is not how HHI normally works. It was outside our box.  HHI’s protocol is that HHI is always led via locals, for locals, in collaboration with a community or national organization.  But… we were intrigued and inspired.  HHI is not meant to be available for a few, no baby comes with an instruction manual, and Geri was living in this community, trusted by this community.  We couldn’t say “no”, so we said “yes!”.

And so begins the story of HHI going to Biro, Namibia.  Geri spent months on Skype calls with HHI’s staff, read all of our materials and worked hard to gain a deep understanding of not only our information, but our way of training.  And last month it all came to life!  The mommies of Biro gathered together outside of the health clinic, they learned from each other and from HHI about early childhood development and all sorts of different ways to better their babies health and brain development.

The moms really liked learning about general health issues and about the behavior and cues that babies make to communicate before they can speak.  Baby cues is a favorite lesson in HHI, it helps caregivers gain a greater insight into what their baby needs and thereby enables them to better respond, making life easier and happier for everyone. During the training the women enjoyed sharing new recipes and in a short time they quickly saw the children had more energy  to get up, play and interact with people. This in-turn led the mothers to interact more with their children as they now felt they understood the reasons behind why the children act a certain way, they felt more confident in getting more involved in what their child was doing.

Geri reported that the moms liked HHI’s training so much that they have now begun a weekly mother’s club to where they can discuss various child health topics and early childhood development.

Bravo Mommas!  And thank you Geri!

She broke down weeping in the middle of the training.  Sujatha (HHI trainer) had been teaching about feeding of babies, but now she stopped the training to talk to this mother privately and ask her what was going on and why she was crying.  The mother caught her breathe and said, “I didn’t know, no one told me.”

This woman, who we’ll call Seeta, had a sad history and the child she lost years ago still remains deep in her heart.  Seeta told her story and it went like this…  She was married when she was only 13 years-old, a child bride in south India.  By the next year, she was pregnant with her first child and soon enough she was the mother a son.  But, she confessed that she didn’t know how to take care of her baby, nobody told her what to do, but she did the best she knew how.  It is not an uncommon practice for babies to be fed by having a bottle of milk propped in their crib.  Seeta fed her baby this way at times and it is what caused his death.

In the training Sujatha had just been talking about this practice as a part of HHI’s lesson on mother and child nutrition.  This brought Seeta back years to her childhood, when she herself was trying to raise a child.  Seeta said “if only I had known, this would have saved my baby’s life.”  She pledged that she would take HHI’s information to everyone she knew, she would spread it like a gospel in her community and to everyone she knew.

Sometimes the most basic information is the most critical.  Years later, she gave birth to and is now raising a healthy and much loved daughter, but she will never forget her son.

Please commit to helping HHI bring critical knowledge and support to more families in need.

Donate today.  $25 transforms the lives of 5 children, and maybe saves a life.

It has been a very full week here in Uganda!  I’ve been working with our partners, Medical Teams International, to evaluate the impact HHI is having on child health in the area. I’ve heard some astounding new stories of love awakening, health flourishing and lives being saved – literally!  Here are just a few highlights.

Around the world, and particularly in Uganda, corporeal punishment is still common and is seen as the way to instill morals and discipline in the children.  Its not all that long ago in my country, the US, where the saying was, “spare the rod, spoil the child”.  But once parents participate in HHI training here in Uganda, one of the number one outcomes I hear is that they “no longer beat the children.”  This is quite the radical change, and I think such change can only be caused by love awakening.  After the parents learn about how children are communicating with them non-verbally, all the time, they begin to see things in a whole new light, from the baby’s perspective. Babies do not cry because they are “bad babies”, but because they are tired, hungry, don’t feel good, etc.  Both parent and child benefit and life gets a little easier, as parents become more successful in responding to their baby’s communication, and their bond grows.

A great story from a father in Lira is that after HHI he began to spend more time with his youngest child and he not only grew to recognize the baby’s needs, but he taught the baby basic signs to communicate even more. Their relationship has blossomed and he is so proud of how bonded his baby is with him. He did not have this relationship with his two older children, who he always turned away and sent to their mother, and who he used to punish with beatings. But, he is not looking back with sadness, rather he is now building new relationships with them as well and he proudly tells of how all of his children now run to greet him and want to spend time with him.   — Way to go Papa!

A few snippets of other success stories from Uganda are these:

• Parents are saying that their younger babies are developing more quickly, talk earlier, walking sooner and are smarter than their older siblings.
• Women used to have been forced to go to the health centers for treatment, they feared the staff and the medical treatments. But since they have now built relationships with the health workers as they learned HHI, they go willingly and are taking their children for immunizations.
• An HHI parent in Ogur learned massage and practiced on her neighbor’s son  who has a disability that kept the knee pulled up to his chest and he couldn’t crawl. By giving and teaching massage, the child can now crawl.  Now the father of child has learned and is continuing the massage.
• “Me and my immediate neighbors now compete in cleanliness of our homes and keeping our children clean.” (parent, Amuca)

And lastly, the story of a life directly saved ~  The story comes from the district of Aromo, where for years thousands of people were confined in refugee camps to escape the savages of war that surrounded their homes.  In the camps, food was scarce, health care even more so, and survival was the daily task.  The majority who survived these camps were left with little dignity, no homes to return to and with HIV.  This is where a young mother was at her wits end with exhaustion and frustration with her baby who had been chronically sick with diarrhea and was not responding to any treatments. She was taking the baby to the river to take drastic action, she was going to throw him in and drown him. At just this time, she came upon Gloria, an HHI Mommy Leader.  Gloria counseled her deeply, listening and offering comfort and hope. After some time, Gloria was able to convince the young mother to take her baby to the Health Center, and she offered to walk her there and stay with her. The outcome is that the baby received treatment and made a full recovery. The veil of the mother’s despair and depression lifted, she returned to her village and now cannot stop talking about how Gloria saved her baby’s life!

Yes, when we say “HHI saves lives”, we are speaking literally.  See Gloria in the red shirt in this picture – Thank you Gloria!

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!