myMADRE

Your Thoughts on Motherhood

Last week, we asked people to share their thoughts on motherhood, and thank you so much to everyone who participated!  Below are some of the responses we received.

Happy Mother's Day!

Since I had my daughter I view life in an entire new light.  Every day serves a purpose and I have reason to wake up every day.  I now realize how valuable a life is and enjoy every moment.  I have found life is not all about me any more.  I enjoy the small things much more than the big.

Summer - Jonesboro, GA

In 1989 I went to Nicaragua because my city has a sister city in El Sauce, Nicaragua.  One of my students from Colombia went with me.  At a party a young Nicaraguan man, 18 years old, talked with my student at a party we went too.  This young man wanted to come to the US for university; my student had him talk to me.  To make a long story short my husband & I adopted this 18 year old Nicaraguan man.  He came to the US when he was 20 and is now a civil engineer who works in NYC.  He has sent at least 7 people... all young women, to university in Nicaragua. 

He also changed the life of our family.  I now spend 3 months each winter with his family and have seen a generation in his family (and mine now) grow up.

Thanks to my student from Queens, who emigrated with his family from Colombia I have a son who is 39 now, AND a large family of about 35 in Leon, Nicaragua.  All of this has changed my life.

Jean Douthwright - Rochester, NY

I have always been empathetic to human pain but since becoming a mother, the empathy has become a vital connection to every other parent.  Seeing footage of a parent grieving over the death of a child or reading about the suffering of someone's child resonates so strongly now that I almost find watching the news unbearable as I grieve with the parent or for that child.  Yet, I still watch and read because cutting myself off from it seems worse. 

In one way, I feel so lucky for the advantages that I have had and that I can give my own children but the flip side is the realization of how slender the thread is that holds us to life or health and any advantage that wealth and education bring can easily be wiped out.  I thought I knew that before but it turns out that I only understood it intellectually.

Porter Figg - Wokingham, England

Buy Seeds for Women Farmers in Sudan

This year, for Mother’s Day, we are sharing the stories from across the globe of women – mothers – who are demanding justice for women and their families.  Through their determination and effort, they have remade their communities and created real change.

Hadija is a 47-year-old farmer. Like many women in Sudan, she grows most of the food that her family eats. Yet, the Ministry of Agriculture refused to recognize Hadija as a farmer and has excluded her from government programs that benefit male farmers.

That is, until MADRE and our partner in Sudan, Zenab for Women in Development, launched the first-ever Women Farmers’ Union in the country. MADRE and Zenab provide seeds, tools and training in organic farming and human rights. The results are powerful. Hadija and the other women farmers are increasing their yields and demanding their rights—as farmers and as women. 

“Without the Women Farmers’ Union, I would never have earned enough to afford school fees for my children,” said Hadija. “I am so proud because this year, I was able to send my youngest daughter to college with the income from my crops.”

One group of women farmers have pooled their extra income to fund literacy training in their village, where 95 percent of the people cannot read. In another village, the women are using their earnings to bring electricity to the community. “Before, women had no hope, no access to seeds or the tools to grow food for themselves and their families,” said Hadija. “Now we are feeding our families and making things better for our communities.”

How You Can Help This Mother’s Day:

A Mother’s Day gift of $25 to the Women Farmers Union for ten pounds of seeds allows two women to farm sorghum, sesame, and millet for one season. With every gift you make for this Mother’s Day, we will send a beautiful card to the person of your choice, telling them about the important work that you are supporting in their name.

To read other stories from the Mothers Make the World series, click here.  To ensure delivery of your card by Mother's Day, please submit your donation by 5pm EST today.

Tell Us What Motherhood Means to You

Purify Water for Families in Gaza

This year, for Mother’s Day, we are sharing the stories from across the globe of women – mothers – who are demanding justice for women and their families.  Through their determination and effort, they have remade their communities and created real change.

Like many Palestinian women living in the Gaza Strip, 40-year-old Maryam struggles to provide safe drinking water for her children. Israel has restricted the movement of people and goods into Gaza since 2007, resulting in a severe shortage of clean water. Gaza’s water supply is contaminated by salt and toxic nitrate. Broken water pipes allow raw sewage to leak into the groundwater supply. “Since the blockade began, my house only has water once a week,” said Maryam, who has 11 children. “The rest of the time, we have to buy water at four times the cost of water from the municipality.” Maryam purchases water from desalination stations in Gaza City and stores the water in plastic containers, which cover nearly every corner of her house, including her bedroom. “I only use the water for drinking and cooking,” said Maryam. “I need more water for washing and other household chores, but it is too expensive. My husband Talal works as a cleaner collecting garbage with his horse. But after rent, water and food for the horse, we have very little money left.”

MADRE is working with the Zakher Association to ensure that Maryam and her family will have reliable, affordable and clean water. The Zakher Association, founded and run by women in Gaza, works in Gaza’s most impoverished communities to alleviate suffering and strengthen the role of women in addressing the medical, economic and social crises that Palestinians face. With MADRE support, the Zakher Association is installing 25 water filters in Gaza City to provide clean drinking water to nearly 52,500 people. Smaller water filters will also be installed in several primary schools, and provide 1,500 children with clean water.

How You Can Help This Mother’s Day:

A Mother’s Day gift of $25 to our partner in Gaza will sponsor clean drinking water for 15 young children. With every gift you make for this Mother’s Day, we will send a beautiful card to the person of your choice, telling them about the important work that you are supporting in their name.

To read other stories from the Mothers Make the World series, click here. To ensure delivery of your card by Mother's Day, please submit your donation by 5pm EST on May 4.

Sponsor a Trauma Counseling Session for a Group of Child Soldiers

This year, for Mother’s Day, we are sharing the stories from across the globe of women – mothers – who are demanding justice for women and their families.  Through their determination and effort, they have remade their communities and created real change.

In Colombia, children are forced to become soldiers. “We never experienced a childhood,” said Marta, who was kidnapped and trained to fight for a paramilitary group when she was 11. “We exchanged our dolls for rifles, our games for combat.” Marta was eventually released onto the streets of Bogotá but she could barely read and was haunted by the killings she had been forced to commit.  Now a young mother, she was left with few options to create a life for herself and for her child.

Marta found MADRE’s partner organization, Taller de Vida. Today she helps other young people heal from the wounds of war and build real alternatives to lives of violence. “Taller de Vida gave me una nueva vida (a new life),” said Marta, knowing that she and her young child have found a new family. The organization provides trauma counseling and art and play therapy to former child soldiers and children who are at high-risk of being recruited by armed groups. MADRE member and youth media producer Miguel Macias recently conducted a series of multimedia workshops at Taller de Vida. Miguel gave former child soldiers like Marta the tools and skills to tell their stories. Click here to see video highlights of their work.

How You Can Help This Mother’s Day:

A Mother’s Day gift of $25 will sponsor one trauma counseling session for a group of ten former child soldiers. With every gift you make for this Mother’s Day, we will send a beautiful card to the person of your choice, telling them about the important work that you are supporting in their name.

To read other stories from the Mothers Make the World series, click here.

Give an Afghan Woman the Tools to Survive

This year, for Mother’s Day, we are sharing the stories from across the globe of women – mothers – who are demanding justice for women and their families.  Through their determination and effort, they have remade their communities and created real change.

“I feared for my own life and wanted to protect my three children but I knew that I could not stay silent,” said Naseema, who bravely reported her husband to the police after she saw him kill a woman in broad daylight. Her husband was arrested, but used his criminal connections to track Naseema down. “I was at a women’s shelter with my children but we had to leave because he kept making threatening phone calls to me,” said Naseema. “And he didn’t stop there—he had my sister shot. When he was released from prison, I moved to another shelter, but he found me.”

Working with Women for Afghan Women in Kabul, MADRE was able to activate our Afghan Women’s Survival Fund for Naseema. The Fund provides shelter, secret transport and other life-saving necessities to Afghan women who are threatened for trying to exercise their most basic human rights. Most recently, the Fund helped to provide housing, transportation and passport fees for Naseema and her children. Thanks to MADRE member support, the family has now been safely relocated in Pakistan.

How You Can Help This Mother’s Day:

A Mother’s Day gift of $30 to the Afghan Women’s Survival Fund will sponsor one cell phone to enable an Afghan woman under threat to communicate. A gift of $50 will provide basic clothing and personal supplies for an Afghan woman in hiding. With every gift you make for this Mother’s Day, we will send a beautiful card to the person of your choice, telling them about the important work that you are supporting in their name.

To read other stories from the Mothers Make the World series, click here.

Support Smallholder Women Farmers in Nicaragua

This year, for Mother’s Day, we are sharing the stories from across the globe of women – mothers – who are demanding justice for women and their families.  Through their determination and effort, they have remade their communities and created real change.

“We are Indigenous People, so the forest has always been our source of food,” said Patricia, who lives in a remote region along Nicaragua’s Coco River. “When our land was taken from us, we became hungry. My eight-year-old daughter stopped laughing. We did a survey with doctors and found that we had a 75 percent malnutrition rate in my community. We had to find a solution and with MADRE we did." Patricia was one of the first to sign up for MADRE’s Harvesting Hope organic farming and livestock-management trainings. After the training, which was offered through MADRE’s partner, Wangki Tangni, Patricia received chickens and learned how to care for them.

Through Harvesting Hope, MADRE and Wangki Tangni have trained thousands of women in small-scale organic farming and livestock-management. We provide seeds, ongoing training and farm animals.

MADRE and Wangki Tangni recently provided organic watermelon, cabbage, squash, tomato and cucumber seeds for 125 small organic farms and coordinated four farmers’ markets. “I now have a small business selling eggs,” said Patricia. “My children are eating everyday and my daughter is laughing again. It is the best sound in the world.”

How You Can Help This Mother’s Day:

A Mother’s Day gift of $50 to Harvesting Hope will enable a local woman to inoculate 20 chickens. With every gift you make for this Mother’s Day, we will send a beautiful card to the person of your choice, telling them about the important work that you are supporting in their name.

To read other stories from the Mothers Make the World series, click here.

Mothers Make the World: Give One Safe Delivery Kit to a Mother in Haiti

Every day, we hear women’s stories of the threats they face, of the violence they confront, of the obstacles to health and happiness that an unjust world throws before them. On Mother’s Day, we want to celebrate the many mothers we work with around the world who overcome these obstacles with tenacity and bravery.

From now until Mother’s Day, we’ll share some of these women’s stories, from six of the communities where MADRE works, on our blog and website. And with each story, we’ll give you a way to join forces with these indomitable women, who are working each day to make the world better than it was the day before.

We’re calling this series Mothers Make the World – and it starts right now.

 

Our partners at the International Feminist Solidarity Camp told us the story of Crista, a young mother in Port-au-Prince:

“One day, we received a telephone call. ‘We don’t know what to do,’ our contact, Martin, told us. ‘A young woman has just given birth on the sidewalk in the middle of town. She cannot move because she has a broken leg and hipbone from the earthquake. She has a cast over half her body.’ Our health teams sprung into action to help Crista and her baby, Carlitos. We pulled together an emergency package of food, water, diapers, baby clothing, a lantern, a sleeping bag and plastic sheets to create a shelter until we could find a tent. It touched our hearts to see the new mother smile at us, even through her excruciating pain. Eventually, we were able to get Crista to a clinic where she underwent surgery on her hip. ‘It was incredible—with so much death around me, I brought life into this world,’ Crista told us, smiling. ‘I thought there was no one to help me, but then you came.’”

Crista is one of the many women that your contributions have enabled us to help. In the critical days following the earthquake, MADRE worked with Partners in Health to support Zanmi Lasante and provide emergency medical care. MADRE also partnered with women’s rights groups to distribute tents, medicine, clothing, hygiene products and baby formula for orphans. And MADRE has supported multiple delegations of Creole-speaking midwives who are providing critical reproductive health care to women in Haiti and training midwives to deliver ongoing care.

How You Can Help This Mother’s Day:

A gift of $35 will provide our partners in Haiti with one safe delivery kit. Each safe delivery kit contains a small bar of soap for washing hands, a plastic sheet to serve as the delivery surface, clean string for tying the umbilical cord, a new razor blade for cutting the cord, a bulb syringe for safely cleaning the baby's nose and pictorial instructions that illustrate the sequence of delivery events and hand-washing.

MADRE is partnering with several organizations in Haiti to ensure that pregnant women have a safe and healthy birthing experience, even during this time of crisis. With every gift you make for this Mother’s Day, we will send a beautiful card to the person of your choice, telling them about the important work that you are supporting in their name.

To read other stories from the Mothers Make the World series, click here.