Buy a gift to support abandoned babies in Uganda

They should be getting ready to spend their first Christmas together. But just a few weeks ago baby Isaac and his destitute mother were discovered sleeping on a verandah in Kampala, Uganda’s capital.

Police alerted social workers from Malaika Babies Home, which cares for some of the thousands of babies abandoned in the east African country every year, and the newborn was admitted to the centre.

Tragically, a few days later Isaac’s mother died.

“We are working to try to reunite him with other family members and have arranged a meeting with his great grandmother to assess her situation and see if she is willing to care for him,” says Barbra Aber, Malaika’s social worker.

“If she is willing to have him and is suitable Isaac will be resettled with her.”

He is likely to spend Christmas and see in the New Year at Malaika. However 53 other previously abandoned babies will spend this special time with new families thanks to Childs i Foundation, the charity set up by former British TV producer Lucy Buck which runs the home.

In October last year baby Baraka was discovered severely malnourished by staff at a hospital after being deserted by his mother. He was taken to Malaika. Seven months later Baraka was adopted by Ugandan couple David and Joyce through Childs i Foundation, who have been assisted by many Australian staff members and volunteers.

“This Christmas will be spent with grandparents, listening to stories by the fire with the rest of the family,” says David excitedly.

“We are looking forward to taking Baraka to our village. Africans usually like spending Christmas with extended family. It’s something we all look forward to.”

Only recently Malaika was home to 25 neglected children between the ages of 0-2 years old.

Following the success of their adoption panel and a mass media campaign this year promoting domestic adoption in Uganda, Childs i Foundation are facing what seemed unthinkable: empty beds at Malaika.

The average baby’s stay at the home before being resettled with a family is 4.9 months. This is a massive achievement by the charity considering that research has concluded any longer than six months in residential care can cause long-term psychological damage.

Childs i Foundation’s adoption media campaign, run in co-ordination with the Ugandan government, was the first of its kind in the country.

“The purpose was to see if we could change the mindsets of Ugandans to encourage them to adopt instead of hundreds of children languishing in orphanages across Uganda,” says Lucy, who opened Malaika 18 months ago after several volunteering stints in Africa.

“We knew we were not going to change minds over night, but we wanted to create a debate.”

During the campaign 100 Ugandan families were assessed to see if they’d make suitable parents.

In Uganda local adoption is relatively uncommon and still carries a stigma.The media campaign has been successful in helping break this down.

“Ugandans are now talking about adoption openly which was not possible just two years ago,” says Desire who adopted baby Joey, found abandoned in a public taxi park before being taken to Malaika.

“The awareness built will last forever and that means more open homes and less abandoned children.”

The campaign was run by Childs i Foundation’s “worldwide community of volunteers”, including some working in the UK media who moved to Kampala for five months.

Sydney TV producer Rebecca Nielsen spent three months working at Malaika as the volunteer co-ordinator when the campaign was happening, her second stint in Africa.

“Working as a television producer takes its toll on your moral conscience so when Lucy (a fellow TV friend) decided to establish Child’s i Foundation and tackle the problem of baby abandonment in Uganda, I knew I had to help,” says Bec.

“Words cannot express how it feels to visit a police station in the middle of the night to pick up an abandoned baby, knowing that only an hour before a frightened mother had to make the most difficult decision of her life.

“What captured my heart was that Child’s i Foundation give families another option and gives babies a chance of a future – instead of a life in an institution where they are an orphan and not a treasured member of a family.”

Selling Ugandan-made jewellery at Balmain Markets in Sydney helps her stay “connected” to the charity when she’s not in Uganda.

Childs i Foundation’s volunteers recently made and launched their Christmas video for the charity’s Baby Shower.

The Baby Shower offers 32 different products to cover the running costs of Malaika and their social work department.

By buying a gift you can help find homes for and support other abandoned babies like Isaac and Baraka, or as Childs i Foundation says “make families not orphans”.