I am delighted to announce that HHI has found a powerful new ally in the HOW Fund! This new foundation is dedicated to promoting the strength, courage, and capacity of women and girls. The HOW Fund chose Hands to Hearts International as its first grantee, in honor of HHI’s focus on empowerment and nurturing, and the powerful impact HHI has had to date in India.

The HOW Fund has put their generous support behind HHI’s upcoming efforts to expand our efforts into Uganda. Hands to Hearts is honored and delighted by their contribution to bring our gift of empowering women and nurturing children to Africa.

Thank you!

The Women’s Crusade
NY Times, By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF and SHERYL WuDUNN

“IN THE 19TH CENTURY, the paramount moral challenge was slavery. In the 20th century, it was totalitarianism. In this century, it is the brutality inflicted on so many women and girls around the globe: sex trafficking, acid attacks, bride burnings and mass rape.“ read the entire article

This article is an astonishing portrait of inspirational stories, horrifying and hopeful statistics and successes that can be created and recreated around the world. It underlies all the reasons why HHI was founded on the interwoven principles of Empowering Women ~ Nurturing Children. To support children, we must first support their caregivers.

“The world is awakening to a powerful truth: Women and girls aren’t the problem; they’re the solution.”

Moorthynayakanpatti is an isolated village situated 85 kilometers away from the nearest city in the Theni District in South India. This area is so remote that it only has a few buses that come anywhere near it, which is significant, as this is not an area where people own their own cars. So, when travel is required, it begins with a 1k. walk to the main road, where the bus will pass… at some point in time.

So it has been no small feat for Sujatha, HHI’s Master Trainer, to reach this village to train 32 mothers how to nurture and best care for their babies. Over the last year Sujatha’s work with HHI has become well known throughout this far-flung region, where news travels via word of mouth from one person to the next. This was how a small local NGO, called “NEWS” came to learn of HHI and then tracked down Sujatha, inviting her to come to their village to support their women and children.

The mothers had never heard how critical the early years are for a lifetime of health, relationships and learning. When they learn that 80% of brain development happens by age 5, and that they can influence this with their everyday actions they become very excited. The women quickly embrace the concepts and begin to make eye contact more often, hold their babies more gently, sing to them more, give them massage, and feed them a broader array of nutrients.

The women enjoy Sujatha and the lessons of HHI are simple and make sense to them. They are now building stronger bonds with their babies and children and building their health with love and nurturing. Another success story from the front lines of HHI, and one that is surely being talked about from mother to mother, friend to friend, from village to village… and the goodness grows on in South India!

Since last June, Sujatha, HHI’s Master Trainer in South India, has been leading HHI trainings for village mothers. In only 9 months, she has now served 32 villages, training mothers and grandmothers and in some places fathers and grandfathers who are welcomed to participate. The results are now rippling through this rural area of South India, where most families live off of agriculture or micro-businesses, but remain in the grips of poverty.

I have been sharing beautiful stories and pictures from these trainings since they began, but it wasn’t until a week ago that I was able to visit this area myself. It is a whole different experience first hand, much deeper, richer, and more multi-faceted. My first visit was to a tribal group, who had only just moved out of living in a small set of caves a few years ago. I described some of that experience in the blog entry before this one.

Then I was able to visit an amazing program called Reaching the Unreached, where HHI has provided training to foster mothers who parent orphaned children, many that are HIV+, but living healthy and full lives due to the love of their new families. When I entered the preschool classrooms at RTU, my heart beat in my throat when all of the children jumped to their feet at the sight of Sujatha and immediately began singing and dancing to one of the songs she taught them last summer. See the joy:

I also was able to visit 4 rural villages where I met dozens of mommies, their babies and children, all of whom had attended an HHI training. They gathered together to talk to me, to share their stories about the impact of what they learned from HHI and the difference it has made for their children and in their communities. Again and again, I heard reports that the women had changed their hygiene practices; boiling feeding bottles, covering food from flies, bathing the children more often and using soap, and that they kept themselves cleaner, especially in preparation for breastfeeding and before they prepared food.

They told of feeding their children a wider variety of foods to provide more nutrients. Women were also practicing baby massage, on their babies and by request for their older children. Many of the mommies also reported that they spent more time interacting with their children, talking and singing to them more often. They noted that their infants were learning language faster than their older children had. Best of all, in 3 of the 4 villages, the women reported that they were so happy with the lessons they learned from HHI, that they were teaching their friends and family members so they could better provide for their children. One of the HHI trainees was an Assisting Nursing Midwife. She works with pregnant mothers around the district and she eagerly told me that she now teaches her expectant and new mothers about the importance of hygiene, nutrition and early childhood brain development.

The seeds of knowledge that HHI has planted are taking root in the fertile soil of capable women who may have been deprived of a formal education, but are intelligent and want to provide the best life possible for their children. Knowledge is a gift that keeps on giving, creating a ripple effect that is now showing up in the health, weight, and language development of the youngest generations of 32 villages (just in the last 9 months in Tamil Nadu alone). HHI will continue to promote health, emphasizing the daily actions any parent can take to pave the way for a better tomorrow.

By Liz Grover
Communications Officer
Hands to Hearts International

My name is Liz Grover and over the past 6 months I have worked as a communications consultant for Hands to Hearts International. My time with HHI is now ending and I’m on to new projects and places, but I must say that It’s been a very educational and interesting experience for me.

I have spent the past 12 years of my life consulting for non-profits and activist movements worldwide; from organizing people to stand up to corporate polluters in the USA, to organizing media tools for elections in war-torn countries, I’ve seen just about all of it. The joy of witnessing so many organizations and meeting so many change-makers is that I get to take pieces of their lessons and use them for my own puzzle of what sustainability means. What really stood out for me the most with HHI is the concept of women village leaders and I like this for several reasons:

1) Women’s Empowerment

I really believe that once you give a woman an inch, she will turn it into a mile. I see this happen with HHI which is constantly training women how to properly nurture and love their babies, and those that they care for (1,691 women trained to date). Not only has HHI reached over 14,269 children through these women, but these women know that they are changing their communities for the better. Just imagine how many of those women spread their knowledge to other women in their own village. It just makes me think of a small stone dropped in a pond and all the ripples that grow from it.

2) The Power of Village Leaders

One of the biggest, most costly mistakes that I’ve witnessed in many countries is that foreign aid does not support capacity building of local people to carry out relief/aid/reparation work. Many times it will send foreign consultants into impoverished nations and go without teaching the local people how to spread their efforts. For example, I have seen elections in certain countries where thousands of internationals are sent in to do the job, again, without capacity building among the locals. Four years later when it’s time for another election, the foreigners have to be brought in again since the local people aren’t as understanding of the process. This costs additional millions and it leaves the locals feeling powerless since they have to rely on foreigners to run their eletion.

HHI provides a healthy and more realistic solution to this problem since its focus is on using localized master trainers who use the tools from their own culture (including language, games, songs and dance) to train others with HHI’s message of healthy child development. That’s where its capacity building shines. For example, someone who lives in the Indian state of Kerala would most likely speak Malayalam. Therefore, HHI sends a master trainer who speaks that language and understands the cultural norms in the area of Kerala where she trains. Local people will be more open to her, meaning that she can work much faster since she doesn’t have to take the time to translate or learn different cultural ideas. This meaningful use of time results in a more cost efficient program.

3) Reaching Humans During Their Most Important Development Stage: 0-5 Years Old

I really appreciate how HHI reaches children at such a young age. In my own studies of human conflict and trauma, many things tend to stem from early childhood. People, many times unknowingly, carry the trauma of early life situations way into their adult lives. They carry the negativity from their childhood as they interact with others. Again, this is a ripple effect, but in a bad way. HHI’s focus on child development can transform the ripples into positivity by giving children loving and nurturing experiences that they can take with them for the rest of their lives. Just imagine how different the world would be if everyone had a positive start of love and happiness; it would be a different place.

These are the lessons of sustainability that I have taken from HHI. It’s been a blessed experience that has helped me to open up to more ideas of what it takes to change the world and I hope that more and more people understand why HHI’s work is a part of the solution to the root of many global problems. It’s a remedy to many disastrous situations, changing despair into hope for many children.