Name: Bless a Baby
Item: Bless a Baby
Rating: 5
Author: ChangeMakersHub

We are a registered NPO (030-051-NPO) and we sew, pack and distribute bags offering much needed support to mothers of newborn babies who experience challenging social circumstances within our local communities, in the form of handcrafted nappy bags filled with essentials for mother and baby, sourced from private and corporate donations.

NPO registration number: 030-051-NPO

WHO

Organization contact person: Linda Hodgkinson

Glynne Rosselli stands at the helm as Executive Director, with a small management team of five that supports her with marketing, admin, sourcing fabric and clothing and leading the work groups of volunteers who help in the workroom and from home. Bless a Baby is 100% volunteer-based.

MISSION

We pack and distribute bags offering much needed support to mothers of newborn babies who experience challenging social circumstances within our local communities, in the form of handcrafted nappy bags filled with essentials for mother and baby, sourced from private and corporate donations.

VISION

We strive to ensure that no new baby born at a hospital we serve goes home without something warm to wear, and no new mother goes home without the necessary personal care items for herself.

PURPOSE

Bless a Baby serves our local communities by giving selected hospital maternity wards access to free baby bags filled with essentials for mom and baby, and by involving volunteers to serve their local community through Bless a Baby.

WHAT

It’s a year since we first experienced a great number of firsts: a worldwide lockdown, a very serious pandemic with the potential to kill millions and a desperate need to find our new normal.

Bless a Baby was not spared any of these challenges, but there was no time to stop during Covid 19. Babies continue to be born every day, new moms are under even more pressure than usual due to economic hardship and our work simply had to continue.

So how did we cope and what did we learn? We now know that above all else, our success lies in our agility, our ability to adapt to change, no matter what gets thrown at us. Bless a Baby sews, fills and distributes over 400 nappy bags for moms and babies every month. Eleven public hospitals rely on that supply to lend a helping hand to those moms who don’t have enough for their new baby.

Faced with a situation unprecedented in this world, we immediately obtained an emergency services permit, adapted our number of volunteers and way of working to comply with safety protocols and common sense and found alternatives to our tried and trusted methods. For over 18 years we had established ways of doing things and suddenly everything had to be re-evaluated. We had to think on our feet as giving up was not an option.

We had to find new ways to get the bags to the hospitals every week on schedule, so we partnered with the Western Cape Department of Health as they had access to the hospitals during the various alert levels that we didn’t. Some hospitals took initiative and started collecting their own bags from our workroom every week.

Mandela Day in July is traditionally an important fundraising and awareness generating event. So instead of 1 day, last year we held it over 4 days to observe the health protocols and make sure everyone stayed safe.

Our knitters had more time and by August we had excess knitted items, which we created special bundles from and distributed to the neediest of communities in Blikkiesdorp, Fisantekraal, Mannenberg and Dunoon in the middle of winter. Again we invited limited numbers of our regular supporters to help us make up the bundles, and by that same night the knitted items were keeping tiny bodies warm as toast!

We partnered unexpectedly with #TygerbergBabyDrive, as they had collected the products and we had the packing and distribution expertise, and together we distributed an incredible extra 600 bags in one month in addition to our normal 430 bags!

As many of our volunteers are elderly or simply did not want to risk coming to our workroom to help, we created Bless a Baby @home, which allows our sewers and knitters to produce their items from home where they are safe.

Amidst the many changes we all experienced the world over, the one constant is where our heart lies; our heart for the newborn babies and their moms, our heart for our volunteers who derive a sense of belonging and pride from the work they do at Bless a Baby, and a heart for our maternity staff, who love to be able to help their patients who need it most.

Everyone has suffered loss and hardship due to Covid 19, but we choose to focus on the positives: over 24 000 families have received a much needed bag of supplies in the almost 20 years of our existence. Come rain or shine, Bless a Baby is there for them!

MAKING A POSITIVE DIFFERENCE

We pack and distribute at least 430 bags every month, which means 430 babies a month born at the local hospitals we serve go home with more than they would have and 430 families benefit from a bit of extra help. Since 2002, over 24,000 families have been positively impacted by Bless a Baby’s work.

WHY

Bless a Baby was founded in October 2002 when a few women became aware of a very specific need that existed, and still exists to this day, at the maternity units at hospitals and clinics in our local communities. Due to economic and other circumstances, some new mothers are so poorly prepared for the arrival of their babies that they have absolutely nothing for them; no clothing, no basic toiletries, not even a wrapping blanket. Bless a Baby not only addresses these needs, but has made it a project of love and dignity too. Our purpose is to provide new mothers with a beautifully crafted bag filled with baby clothing, essential toiletries for mom and baby in the first few days after birth, a blanket, and many other items according to our packing lists carefully designed over the years, and to make them feel loved and valued despite their personal circumstances. Our immediate goals are to fund the contents for the 430 bags we supply every month, while in the longer term we seek to expand our service as the need is never-ending. Bless a Baby is 100% staffed by volunteers.

Volunteers sew and pack the beautiful bags from donated fabric that are filled with donated essentials, which we then distribute to 11 local hospital maternity wards, namely Karl Bremer Hospital, Kraaifontein Day Hospital, Tygerberg Hospital, Wesfleur Hospital in Atlantis, the Durbanville Clinic, Paarl Provincial Hospital, Mowbray Maternity Hospital, Delft MOU, Eerste River, Bishop Lavis and Elsies River hospitals.

Other volunteers knit or crochet blankets and jersey sets, which are key items in our bags.

Up to the end of April 2021, we made, packed and distributed more than 24,000 bags. That means more than 24,000 families have been impacted in the best possible way by receiving a helping hand with their newborn.

WISHLIST

HOW TO GET INVOLVED

♥ Knit, crochet or sew for us. Contact us for details.

♥ Donate items or clothing for our bags or make a regular monthly or one-off financial contribution via Payfast https://www.payfast.co.za/donate/go/blessababy or BackABuddy https://backabuddy.co.za/bab

♥ Become a volunteer and donate your time in the workroom. Contact us for details.

♥ Act as a drop-off point for donations and deliver them to our workroom

♥ Be an ambassador and use your network of connections

♥ Follow us and share and like our posts on social media:

Facebook http://www.facebook.com/blessababy2014 or on Instagram @bless_a_baby

♥ Ask your company to consider us as a beneficiary of their Corporate Social Responsibility programme

♥ Add Bless a Baby as a beneficiary on your Woolworths MySchool MyVillage MyPlanet card

♥ Use your online shopping account to purchase toiletries and baby clothing and have it delivered to:

Bless a Baby, c/o El Shaddai Christian School

Lord’s Walk

Off Langeberg Road

Durbanville

7550

NOMINATED BY: Chrisna Steenkamp

Sort By

Linda

Bless a Baby fulfills such an important function in today’s tough economic environment and social circumstances. The volunteers work tirelessly to meet their commitment to supply hundreds of bags every month to the hospitals on their lists. They rely fully on donations and are not funded by government at all. They need us to be able to continue with their work. What an incredible, selfless project this is.
2 years ago
Michell Joubert

Bless-a-Baby is a very special and unique organization that continue to serve their community every week by packing beautiful handmade baby bags for mothers and babies in need. They are a volunteer and donation based organizations focussing on the core value of making sure that babies born in their community is covered and warm at birth and going home from hospital with the basic essentials for those first few weeks of life.. Giving these precious babies a fair chance at life and assisting mothers with newborns at a very vulnerable time..

Every donation – small or large – makes a difference and has an impact on families.
Donations of baby clothing, knitting, baby products, fabric & volunteering time to sew, knit, sort & pack bags gives donors & sponsors & volunteers a purpose and connects them with their community. They are hands-on & involved in making a difference one baby at a time.

The need is still great. Bless-a-Baby is an essential “ChangeMaker” in their local community.
I am blessed to be a part of their volunteering team and wish them all the est for the future.
2 years ago
Jill PP

Not only does Bless-a-Baby give to mothers of newborns, they also give us as volunteers a sense of purpose. They are able to use whatever talents we have – whether it be donating, sorting, packing, knitting, crocheting or sewing – and make a space for each of us.

This in turn helps to spread the word of what Bless-a-Baby does, and encourages others to become part of us. We have regular visitors from many corporates, and even donations sent to us from all over the country and even overseas.
2 years ago
Kathleen la Grange

Wonderful, dedicated and joy-filled response to the needs of the most vulnerable mothers and newborn babies in our society.
Bless-a-Baby is consistent in meeting the challenges and being a conduit of love and upliftment. Each tiny donation goes directly to those who need it.
2 years ago
Steven

Giving birth is such an awesomely hectic experience (so I hear), that can be exacerbated even more so when you’re a Mother that don’t have the basics (clothes / toiletries etc.) for the newborn and even yourself…
Imagine having to wrap you little one; in the only jersey and or T-shirt you wore when coming to give birth…
Then having to get in public transport back home…Not yet fully enjoying and or appreciating the arrival of your bundle of joy, because you’re still stressing over the basic items for your little one.
But! Through one-woman’s unselfish heart, whom by God’s grace, heard the silent cries of these mothers, and with the help of a few people, companies and organizations was able to touch so many lives over the years.
May the Organization continue to grow and continue to do the AMAZING job they have been thus far.
2 years ago
Lorena

Bless-a-baby has opened my eyes to the fact that there are many
babies born into poverty. As a volunteer it warms my heart to know that there are people with good hearts making a difference one baby at a time.
2 years ago
Ian

Bless a Baby does incredible work to help moms and newborns with necessities for the first few days after birth. Keep up the good work, ladies!
2 years ago
Chrisna Steenkamp

The Bless a Baby team made it very easy and convenient for me to contact them and profile their NGO. It is clear to me that they are very passionate about their work and making a difference. It was a pleasure for me to work with them.
2 years ago

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