By Catharina van den Bosch | Founder/Director
As the armed conflict has subsided and communications with government are being restored we are bracing ourselves for more abandoned babies.
We currently have 6 under 1 year old babies in our care. Some of these babies are the babies of rape survivors and we have worked with their mothers but the mothers are not able to look after their babies at this time.
We have taken these babies to prevent abandonment and some mothers have promised to come back for them! So far one has come to see her now one year old and is working towards creating a home for her and her child!
Other mothers we are still working with them as many are so traumatized that it just will take time before they are ready. But we never give up on these situations and we will love these babies and work with their mothers.
The war has also increased the number of abandoned babies who were illegally taken by displaced people and used for the sole benefit of these people. They go with these babies from office to office to try to get as much assistance as they can. This is exploitation and we have already received one baby who was in a situation like that. The people who were using this child were furious that the government had stepped in and removed the cild from their care as they now saw their "source of income" being taken from them. We believe this is not the only case but as organization we can't do anything. As the government is slowly starting to function again we think that we may get more of these cases.
At the same time we have re-established our presence in the local hospital as several dead babies had been found in the bathrooms. We try to do prevention and counsel at-risk prospective mothers to not abandon or kill their babies and allow us to work with them. Women often are very traumatized and panic when they find out that they are pregnant, especially out of rape, we counsel them and assist them to work on a future for the mother and her baby, if the mother refuses all assistance we accept the baby before it is abandoned or killed. We hope that this effort will prevent more innocent babies from loosing their life.
Thank you so much for your continued support for this project, your contribution is helping us to assist the silent and innocent victims of this war!
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