Look What We Did TOGETHER!

Over the past few days, we had a smattering of random donations come in online and an improvised LOVE CLUB in Hawaii, AND WE HAVE OFFICIALLY FUNDED OUR MATERNITY UNIT!

1. We are floored by the generosity of over 150 people who made this happen.

2. We still have three scheduled Love Clubs this weekend, and any extra donations that come in will go toward buying supplies and equipment for the maternity unit.  We thought we were setting a reasonable but challenging goal, but apparently we underestimated how awesome you are.  Sorry about that.

3. The story about the Love Club that put us over the top is INCREDIBLE and too good not to share.

So, we have this friend, Nic, who is in the Air Force and stationed in Hawaii.  He wanted to start a Love Club to honor his mama, Jaema or “Marm” to her friends, who passed away about a year ago. 

Nic tried to plan a party, but as our military friends know all too well, it didn’t come together because his friends kept leaving to go on trips.  Did Nic let that stop him?  Absolutely not.  Instead, he started walking around his squadron telling people our story and collecting donations (snapping pictures of our friends in uniform all along the way!).

Nic, we thank you for your service to our country, applaud you for your persistence and commitment to Somebody’s Mama, and join with you in honoring your mama.  We are proud to call you a friend, and we know your mama is proud of you, too!  What an incredible way to honor her memory.

This maternity unit will serve women in Sierra Leone who would have otherwise had no pre- or post-natal care, saving the lives of thousands of mamas and babies for years to come. As we celebrate our collective accomplishment, we also celebrate Nic and Jaema.  Cheers, mamas!

Mama of the Month: Tara

Last year, Somebody’s Mama co-founder, Erika, attended Idea Camp in Austin, TX.  The event was an opportunity for organizations like ours to gather, share stories, and become friends with other people who are changing their communities.  Our new Mama of the Month, Tara, and her husband, Troy, were presenters representing Heartline Ministries in Port au Prince, Haiti.  Erika was drawn to Tara’s story, one of adventure and grace, and we knew we wanted to be a part of what Heartline is doing!

Tara works as a midwife apprentice (and will be finishing her midwife credentials in August) and is part of a team of seven women, four Haitian and three American, who run the maternity center and prenatal program.  The team has facilitated over 350 births with no loss of life to mothers or babies.  That is quite the feat in Haiti, a country that has held the title of poorest nation in the western hemisphere for decades.  

Tara’s personal journey of motherhood is long and varied with seven kids ranging in age from 6 to 24.  Tara and Troy fell in love with Haiti through the process of adoption, and after their first two adoptions were complete, they decided to move to Haiti permanently in January 2006, nurturing seeds of both love and concern for their children’s home country.

Heartline Ministries began as an adoption organization and has been working in Port au Prince since 1998.  Their website describes what an integral role they have played in relief, restoration, and development in their city. 

“On January 12, 2010 everything changed as a devastating earthquake destroyed most of Port Au Prince. Millions were killed, injured, or made homeless. By the grace of God, our facilities experienced minor damage and none of the people working for Heartline were seriously injured.

We responded immediately by transforming the maternity center into an emergency clinic where we performed major surgeries and helped hundreds of people recover. We were one of the few places in the city that could function so quickly after the earthquake due to the experienced group of missionaries and medical professionals and their diligent work. After about a year we were able to resume full time maternity services.”

Aside from their life-giving work at the maternity center, Heartline also addresses the needs of the community through life skills training for both women and men as well as feeding and education programs for children.

When we asked Tara why she does this work, she answered, “The need for quality care in all areas of healthcare is great in Haiti.  Maternal healthcare is especially important in that it can reduce drastically the number of orphaned children.  I love and feel honored to be able to work with women during some the most important, frightening, joyous, and challenging months of their lives.  I love seeing a woman come to believe in her ability to give birth to and parent her child. Supporting a woman that truly only needs some encouragement and watching her rise to the occasion and become the mother she was always able to be is a gift.”

Three babies who were born last week at the maternity center

She also shared some of the joys and challenges of being a mother to seven children.  “Motherhood is insanely different than I imagined.  The highs are so high and the lows...well, they are soooooo low.  I guess I didn't know it would be as funny as it is (little kids are ridiculously funny), and I also didn't anticipate it being quite so challenging. We have kids spaced out over 18 years…this means we are parenting littles, mediums, and big adult kids all at once.  I think little kids are way easier.  Little kid stuff is so inconsequential, "You lied about eating the entire bag of candy”—guess what? That goes away with your tummy ache after you puke.  No big deal.  Bad choice equals two hours of pain.  I like that sin to consequence balance—one mistake doesn't equal a lifetime of anything.  Something about the weight of big kid mistakes makes it all feel so daunting. I am a young mom, so maybe someday this will all make sense but so far, it is hard to figure out how to do the big kid thing well. The line between letting go (that whole give them wings thing) in a healthy way, and offering advice, guidance, and warnings that drive your children insane, is razor thin.  I so want to nail it, but usually feel like I am hammering my thumb and missing the nail altogether.”

Luckily, Tara has some inspiration from her own mother about how to get through the hard parts of parenting. “My mom worked hard when she needed to and taught me the value of finishing what you start. I have wanted to quit various things in my life, but she and my dad noticed that pattern in me when I was in 7th grade and they just refused to allow quitting to be an option.  That honestly was a huge gift.  Just because it is hard (painful, not fun, whatever)—doesn’t mean quitting is the best answer.  There are rewards for pushing through.”

What a gift, indeed.  Whether Tara is parenting from afar (her two oldest are back in the States now) or helping women literally push through the pains of labor, she embodies the spirit of what Rabindranath Tagore wrote: “Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers, but to be fearless in facing them.  Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain, but for the heart to conquer it.”

Mamas and babies

Today we are honored to know Tara and to support the work she is doing at Heartline. Tara, we applaud your willingness to serve, your heart for the people of Haiti, and your ability to inspire the rest of us to love greatly.  Bravo, Mama.  Love on!

Mama of the Month: Dr. ABD

Our last three MOMs (mamas of the month) have been women of influence with passion to affect change in the world around them.  We highlighted a mother of six who is changing the lives of women through economic empowerment.  We celebrated a woman living with her family of seven in the jungles of Costa Rica to bring hope and healthcare to pregnant women.  Last month, we applauded the work of a woman who has spent the majority of her life supporting education for all.

This month, we’re doing something a little unexpected, but we have a really good reason.  The reality is that so much of what are described as “women’s issues” for lack of a better term are not simply women’s issues—they are issues that affect men and children alike.  Statistics and anecdotal evidence supports the idea that communities thrive when women are empowered, supported, and given the chance to lead.  While we are a community of women committed to helping women, much is being done in the world for women by men who stand up to champion our rights and well-being as well.  

Our “Mama” of the Month this time around is a man who does just that.  We first met Dr. Abdullah Daniel Sesay through Steve, the founder of our parent organization, 4HIM.  Steve was hosting Dr. ABD (as he is known by his friends) while he was visiting the U. S. for a medical conference.  During that time, we learned about Dr. ABD’s plight as a doctor in Sierra Leone, a country that has been ravaged by civil war in the recent past.

4HIM helped Dr. ABD over the course of a few years with securing funding for building a clinic and for life-saving hernia surgeries for over 60 men.  4HIM also arranged to send two shipping containers full of medical supplies for use at the Magbenteh Hospital and Dr. ABD’s Gardenview Clinic in Makeni.  As we got to know Dr. ABD, we learned of his desire to build a maternity ward—which gave us the idea for our first ever Love Club fundraiser.  We are going to build a maternity ward at the Gardenview Clinic in Makeni, Sierra Leone!

Dr. ABD at the Sierra Leone House of Parliament

We have watched Dr. ABD’s commitment to his patients as a general practitioner and general surgeon, as well as his devotion to the country of Sierra Leone as a member of parliament.  He often works 16-18 hour days seeing as many patients as possible because healthcare is so limited in the region where he lives—one regional hospital and a few private clinics for about 2.5 million people.

Sierra Leone’s maternal and infant mortality rates are among the worst in the world.  Much has been done to improve these numbers in the past decade, but they still fall short of the World Health Organization’s Millenium Development Goal of reducing mortality rates by 75% by 2015.

Dr. ABD lists lack of education, poor nutrition, and other social and economic factors as reasons for high maternal mortality rates.  Infant mortality rates continue to be high because of infectious diseases, herbal/traditional medicine intoxication, and poor counseling from relatives.  Despite the fact that Sierra Leone launched a program to provide free healthcare for all pregnant and post-natal women in 2010, the problem remains that 42% of births are still delivered at home without the aid of trained physicians, midwives, nurses, or aids.  It is simply too difficult for many of these women to travel the distance to the nearest hospital or clinic.

Dr. ABD and his staff with an ovarian tumor they removed from a patient

Dr. ABD has already been providing the best level of prenatal and postnatal healthcare possible at his clinic, as well as saving the lives of women suffering from cancers and other tumors through surgery.  Recently, a foundation out of Europe has offered a great deal of funding to hospitals in Sierra Leone that have functioning maternity wards.  Helping Dr. ABD finish his maternity ward will open the door for him to partner with another organization willing to grant funding for the hospital.

We emailed Dr. ABD to explain who we are at Somebody’s Mama and to ask him a few questions.  His responses were weighty and humbling.  He shared several specific stories about women who have come to him for care—a 35-year-old woman suffering from swollen extremities and difficulty breathing who walked for four hours before she was able to get transportation to the nearest hospital.  She was diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver from herbal intoxication.  Dr. ABD was able to help her deliver her baby successfully, and she is still under his care for her liver issues.  

Dr. ABD says there are too many stories like this to tell.  However, he is adamant in his belief that things will get better—it is what drives his long days of work and why he fights for the rights of his people in parliament. 

When we asked Dr. ABD to share his thoughts about his own mother and other mothers who inspire him, he was brought to tears thinking about the sacrifices his own mother made and his regret that she was not alive to see the fruits of her labor.  His mother suffered from abuse by the aunt who brought her up, leaving her crippled.  She lost five babies before he was born and almost lost him, as it took him three months to stabilize before he was able to leave the hospital.  She went on to have six more children.  He shared, “Mum taught me to cook, take care of my room and be helpful to others. She was caring and loving and I just miss her. There is so much I can write about her but time does not permit me.”

Dr. ABD paid tribute to an aunt, a single mother, who taught him to be “honest, true, and God-fearing.”  He added that he admires Dr. Christina Thorpe, the current electoral commissioner of Sierra Leone because she is smart, honest, firm and forthright in all she does.  Lastly, he added his admiration for his wife, who took in his two children from a previous marriage and cared for them as her own while she struggled to get pregnant for eight years.  They have raised five children together, and he pointed out her strength to endure hard times and her patience.

Dr. ABD and family members sending his son to medical school in Ukraine

Dr. ABD appreciates deeply the influence strong women have had on his life and passionately advocates for women's rights and access to healthcare.  We are proud to call him a friend and excited to crown him April's "Mama" of the Month! 

Thank you, Dr. ABD, for all you are doing, and we look forward to partnering with you to build this maternity ward.

What Now?

So you’ve agreed to host a Love Party!  And now you’re like—wait, what have I gotten myself into?  Never fear—your friendly neighborhood SuperMamas are here to guide you along the way to forming the best ever Love Club.  Remember this is about creating an event that fits the personality of YOUR group of friends, so it’s going to look a little different for everyone.  Here are four simple steps to being the best CHUM a girl could ask for:

 Create your guest list and event.  Do your friends all communicate on Facebook?  Create a Facebook event.  Are your friends of the more traditional calligraphy-loving type?  Send out invitations!  Are you friends with a bunch of texters?  Text out that info!  Do what you do when you want all your friends to come hang out.

 Have your information ready to answer people’s questions.  This is the part that we’re going to help out with.  Between now and your party, we will arm you with all the information you need to answer questions about why we’re asking people to donate money.  For now, you should know that we are attempting to build a maternity ward at a hospital in Sierra Leone (West Africa).  Sierra Leone is one of the poorest nations in the world, having been at civil war for almost two decades.  Medical facilities are few and far between.  We have partnered with a doctor who wishes to build a maternity ward at an existing hospital that will serve thousands of women who would not have access to any other form of maternal healthcare.  We are still gathering all the appropriate information and will send out more details as it gets closer to the time for our parties.

 Use this time together to get people excited about what we’re doing.  The goal of Somebody’s Mama has been to turn ideas into action from the beginning.  It’s one thing to talk about how much we care about making lives better—it’s another to move forward to affect real change.  This time, we’re building a maternity ward in Sierra Leone—but next time we might be investing in small enterprise businesses or building a school.  There is no limit to what we can do if we pool our resources.  The key to our success as Mamas is to find other Mamas who get just as excited as we are.

 Make sure to collect money!  Obviously, we’re building community and awareness, but the goal of this even is absolutely fundraising.  Some people get a little anxious when we start talking about money, but there’s no reason to worry about this part.  We want to make it as simple as possible.  We will provide you with all the information about how to send in any cash or checks you collect, and you will also receive information about how you can have technology available (computer, iPad, etc.) for people to give directly on a website—the simplest way to give.  As always, all donations are tax-deductible!

Thank you for stepping up to be a House Mama.  We can’t wait to see what great things come from the power of partying!

Lots of love (obviously),

Erika Wright and Leia Johnson

Founders of Somebody's Mama

Who Wants to Party?

For the past few months, we’ve been working on building a community of people dedicated to awareness and action.  We’ve been overwhelmed by the response people have had to some of our informational posts about maternal health and education, our inspirational posts about our MOMs (mamas of the month), and the posts celebrating the beauty that is being a Mama.

Over the last couple of years, we’ve worked in conjunction with our parent organization to complete two small projects that changed the lives of women in Uganda and one mama in Costa Rica.  These projects were successful because we had YOUR support.

NOW IS THE TIME TO DO SOMETHING BIG!  

So, here’s our first official roll call for House Mamas!  Want to know if you qualify?  Here’s the application:

1. Do you have friends?

2. Would you like to help change the lives of women?

If you answered yes to those two questions, you’re hired!  And you know what we want you to do?  We want you to have a party!  A Love Party!  We want you to gather with your friends in the same way you always do—but this time, we want you to share the vision of Somebody’s Mama.  We’ve picked a really special project, and we can’t do it without you.  Here’s what you need to know in order to say YES to being a House Mama:

• Our first quarterly project involves building a maternity ward at a hospital in one of the poorest nations in the world (more information to come shortly).  
• Our goal is for each of us to plan our parties between April 8th-15th (you pick what works best for you in that timeframe).
• You are in charge of what your party looks like!

Here are just a few ideas about how you can structure your party:

• Host a potluck dinner party and tell everyone to chip in what it would have cost if you’d gone out to dinner!
• Host bunco/bridge/game night like you do every month and instead of giving out prizes for the winners, dedicate one evening to Somebody’s Mama!
• Is your group of friends into garage sales?  Pool your stuff together for a big sale and donate the proceeds to our project!
• Come up with something cool that YOUR friends would love and run with it!  This is about connecting our everyday living with some simple giving.

Once you have agreed to be a House Mama, we will send you an information packet (via email) with more information about the project.  It will answer the who/what/when/where questions and provide instructions on how to structure your “presentation” to your friends.  We will equip you with all the resources to help engage others in the mission of Somebody’s Mama—and we hope you’ll have fun doing it!

Please contact us via Facebook or by email (somebodysmama@outlook.com) if you are ready to join us in our worldwide Love Party!

Mama of the Month: Nancy

When we launched Somebody’s Mama, our goal was to bring awareness to issues affecting women across the globe, to create a community of people who care deeply about finding real solutions, and to turn ideas into action.  We are a project of 4HIM, an organization that has been working with people around the world to create stronger families and communities through partnership.  4HIM has a history of working both locally and globally, and one of the questions we hear often is “Why go to other countries?” or put another way, “Why don’t you just work locally?”  It’s a valid question—anyone with her eyes open will see that there are opportunities to partner with the underserved right outside our front door.

The answer to that question is complex but put simply: it’s a small world.  We do not see caring for our literal neighbors or our neighbors in Africa as being different, and it certainly isn’t an either/or dilemma.  We might even argue that serving in your own backyard can inspire you to do the same somewhere far away.  We believe that the good we do "here" is practice for the good we can do "there."

We chose our newest MOM because she embodies the spirit of compassion that motivates us to address the problems directly in our faces AND the perspective that cross-cultural relationships bring.  Nancy has worked in the education field  for almost 25 years, first as a teacher and then as a guidance counselor.  She happens to be the wife of 4HIM’s founder, Steve, and the actual mother of, Leia, one of Somebody’s Mama’s founding members.  Over the last twenty years, she’s spent many vacation days traveling to areas of the world where education is an opportunity for the privileged and merely a slight possibility for many poor and rural families.

Motivated by the belief that once the immediate needs of food, water, and shelter are met, every single person deserves a chance to educate themselves, Nancy has inspired hundreds, maybe thousands, of young children to believe in their potential—from a classroom in Oklahoma City, OK to the beaches of West Africa.

We asked Nancy to answer a few simple questions. Her answers need no crafting to create a narrative.  She’s a woman who gets what Somebody’s Mama is all about.  Here’s what Nancy had to say:

Q: What drew you to education? What role do you see education playing in improving conditions for women around the world?  

A: I love Derek Bok’s quote “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.”  Education empowers people to think, create, dream, hope, and thrive.  Without education, people are at the mercy of others.  
I was a teacher long before I got a degree.  I looked for opportunities to teach others even as a small child.  I admired my own teachers who nurtured my love of learning and the desire to teach others. 
Lack of education hinders people from being able earn a living wage, judge whether business deals are fair, read laws, and influence the community.  This is true especially for women who have been stripped of dignity, property rights, opportunity, and control.  Families and communities benefit when women are given a voice, training, and a chance to improve themselves.

Nancy with the staff from her school

Q:  What are some lessons you learned from your own mother? What are the biggest challenges and joys you’ve experienced as a mother?

A: My mother repeatedly said, “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”  I pursued goals which were unthinkable and often discouraged in my rural community.  Expectations were low for many girls.  In contrast, my teachers continually told me that I could and should go to college.  Along with their encouragement, I could hear my mom’s mantra.  I pursued a B.S. in Elementary Education then continued until I received my M.Ed. in Guidance and Counseling.
The biggest challenge of mothering was to build confidence and independence in my child without losing the ability to guide her until she was an adult.  The biggest joy of mothering was seeing my daughter use her confidence and independence to empower her own children.
Children have reminded me of my influence by their responses to me.  One boy asked me if I really believed he could go to college.  I responded by saying, “I believe you will with all of my heart.”  I’ve rocked little ones full of despair to have them say, “You love me.”  Yes, I do.  I correct children with the reassurance that I love them too much to let them fail.  Education is an invaluable tool for people regardless of where they live.

Nancy with her husband, daughter, son-in-law, and grandsons

Statistics tell us that there are 65 million girls without access to education in the world today, many of them in countries stripped bare by war, famine, and poverty.  These girls are no less bright than the babies we are raising in the United States, and their lives are just as important as the lives of our daughters.  We are passionate about education at Somebody’s Mama because we’ve seen how it has elevated people out of poverty—books, school uniforms, pencils and paper are, in a sense, tangible hope.

One of our first roles as Mamas is that of teacher.  It’s something that comes naturally to many of us—we teach them how to talk and to walk, how to use a spoon and how to ride a bike.  We teach them how to be confident and how to be a friend.  We teach them how to love themselves and how to love others.  

Undoubtedly, many of us can look back on our own education journeys and pinpoint a teacher who inspired us in some way to be better, do better, think better—teachers like Nancy, who believe that every single child deserves a chance to learn and that every single child who is given that opportunity has a chance to change the world.

Mama of the Month: Colleen

Meet our January MOM--Colleen!  We first met Colleen at Idea Camp in Austin, TX, where a group of people from around the world had gathered to talk about “human care.”  At the heart of the conference was a goal to share stories, brainstorm ways to connect, and explore what it means to care for each other.

Colleen describes herself as a “homeschooling, jungle living, freelance writing, Pope Francis loving Catholic missionary who is beginning her third year of serving the indigenous Cabecar population in one of the most remote areas of Costa Rica.”  She, along with her husband, Greg, and five boys founded the St. Bryce Mission with the aid of local bishops.  In just a couple of years, Colleen and her family have established programs focused on food sustainability, employment opportunity, education, and maternal healthcare.

One of the things Somebody’s Mama wants to accomplish is finding ways to improve maternal healthcare around the world, so we were especially interested in Colleen’s work at the St. Francis Emmaus Hospitality Center.  Infant and maternal mortality rates among the Cabecar people are high due to the remoteness of their village and lack of access to medical care, so Colleen’s family welcomes expectant and new mothers to live for a short time in an addition to their house. (Yep, you read that right!)  While staying at the center, women and their families receive pre- and post-natal care with access to medical facilities that would be hours away if they birthed their children at home in the village.  Currently, the center can accommodate five mothers and their families at a time, and they hope to eventually expand to accommodate twenty.

Last month, we jumped at the chance to network with Colleen when she shared a story about a young mother whose milk supply was not ample enough to feed her baby, something rare among the Cabecar women, who typically breastfeed exclusively for two years with each child, and something that meant almost certain death for her baby.  Within a couple of days ten Mamas had donated $400 to purchase formula for the baby’s first year of life.  This tiny effort made a life-changing impact on a Costa Rican Mama, embodying the spirit of Mother Theresa who famously said, “We cannot do great things, only small things with great love.”

Last week, Colleen posted on Facebook that “Thanks to your help and support, baby Sabrina is thriving and was released in to well baby care at her last check up...our friends at Somebody’s Mama have ensured through their support that Noemy will be able to supplement with the formula Sabrina needs for her whole first year! The infant mortality rate among the Cabecars in five times higher than the national rate in Costa Rica and equals that in nations such as Tanzania. With your help, the St. Bryce Foundation is taking that down one baby at a time.”

When we asked Colleen what great lessons motherhood has taught her, she told us that being a mother is a gift that reflects the true nature of love in a way nothing else can.  She also takes joy in seeing how the bond of motherhood crosses boundaries and breaks down walls to help her connect with the women she serves.

Aside from loving the adventure and challenge of raising five boys, Colleen also knows the pain of losing a child at a very young age and four others through miscarriage.  Her mothering experience has been full of joy and pain, love and loss, triumph and defeat--an experience that brings into sharp focus the importance of supporting other mothers on their journeys.  About her own mother, Colleen says that she learned to nurture love and laughter in her home and to always remember to purposefully take time to care for herself and to invest in friendships.  Colleen added that even as a missionary wife and mom, she enjoys a little girly bling, bright lipstick, and shoes that make a statement.

Somebody’s Mama is blessed to call Colleen a friend and fellow Mama.  We are happy to have been able to play a small part in the success of her mission in Costa Rica and look forward to following Colleen’s journey with St. Bryce Mission.  Join us today in celebrating a life well-lived, a Mama who is the essence of all we believe about who we can be.  Brava, Mama!