zonta birthing kits

I spent most of today helping at a Zonta project. Fund-raising is done during the year to buy the components for birthing kits (with the help of a dollar-for-dollar AusAID grant) and then once a year there's a big assembly day. This morning we set up the hall and organised all the components (cut the Chux wipes, folded the plastic, counted it all into lots so that each table had enough of each thing for 240 complete kits). In the afternoon more people arrived and we assembled all 3000 birthing kits. We actually finished in half the allotted time, so next year the goal will be 5000.

A little background info:

Of the hundreds of thousands of women who die each year in childbirth, 99% are from developing countries. For each woman who dies this way, another 30 women incur injuries and infections - many of which are painful, disabling, embarrassing and lifelong. Providing clean birthing conditions significantly improves the survival rate.

The idea is provide the basic items needed to prevent infection to mother and baby:










1 square metre of thick plastic to provide a clean birth site
1 pair of gloves to prevent the birth attendant transmitting germs to mother and baby
1 sterile razor to cut the umbilical cord
2 sterile umbilical cord clamps (one for the mother, one for the baby)
3 pieces of clean gauze to wipe birth canal secretions from the baby's eyes (decreases the incidence of future eye infections)
1 piece of soap
1 clean cloth
All contained in a small press seal plastic bag.

I really enjoyed being involved in the project. It's such a direct and practical way to help. This year the birthing kits we made will be sent to women in Uganda (last year it was Papua New Guinea).

q4: study the following photographs carefully. compare and contrast.

I was planning to post a series of pictures about food consumption across the globe that I received by email this morning.

But yankee girl has already done it.

And a word from our sponsor:
Have a second glance over them and think about who is using (and disposing of) the most unnecessary packaging. Remember, in the catchphrase 'reduce, reuse, recycle' the words are given in order of effectiveness in helping the environment. A lot of that packaging can be recycled, but the best move is to reduce the amount we use in the first place. That not only reduces the amount of rubbish we produce or recycling that needs to be processed; it also reduces the resources used to make the packaging in the first place.

wept like a baby watching this video

This is a shortened version of the story - for the whole thing follow the title link or just watch the video. I've mainly included the text in case anyone can't access the youtube video. People like this are so inspiring. We have so much strength that we don't realise until something calls it from us. I wish it was easier to tap into my potential as a human being without waiting for some terrible challenge to demand it of me. Dick Hoyt at half speed would make my life look unfulfilled.



The story:

Rick Hoyt (Dick's son) was strangled by the umbilical cord during birth, leaving him brain-damaged and unable to control his limbs.
"He'll be a vegetable the rest of his life;'' Dick says doctors told him And his wife, Judy, when Rick was nine months old. ``Put him in an institution.''
But the Hoyts weren't buying it. They noticed the way Rick's eyes Followed them around the room. When Rick was 11 they took him to the Engineering department at Tufts University and asked if there was anything to help the boy communicate. ``No way,'' Dick says he was told. ``There's nothing going on in his brain.''
"Tell him a joke,'' Dick countered. They did. Rick laughed. Turns out a lot was going on in his brain. Rigged up with a computer that allowed him to control the cursor by touching a switch with the side of his head, Rick was finally able to communicate. First words? ``Go Bruins!'' And after a high school classmate was paralyzed in an accident and the school organized a charity run for him, Rick pecked out, ``Dad, I want to do that.''
Yeah, right. How was Dick, a self-described ``porker'' who never ran more than a mile at a time, going to push his son five miles? Still, he tried. ``Then it was me who was handicapped,'' Dick says. ``I was sore for two weeks.''
That day changed Rick's life. ``Dad,'' he typed, ``when we were running, It felt like I wasn't disabled anymore!''
And that sentence changed Dick's life. He became obsessed with giving Rick that feeling as often as he could. He got into such hard-belly shape that he and Rick were ready to try the 1979 Boston Marathon.

Eighty-five times he's pushed his disabled son, Rick, 26.2 miles in marathons. Eight times he's not only pushed him 26.2 miles in a wheelchair but also towed him 2.4 miles in a dinghy while swimming and pedaled him 112 miles in a seat on the handlebars--all in the same day. Dick's also pulled him cross-country skiing, taken him on his back mountain climbing and once hauled him across the U.S. on a bike.

This year, at ages 65 and 43, Dick and Rick finished their 24th Boston Marathon, in 5,083rd place out of more than 20,000 starters. Their best time? Two hours, 40 minutes in 1992--only 35 minutes off the world record, which, in case you don't keep track of these things, happens to be held by a guy who was not pushing another man in a wheelchair at the time.
``No question about it,'' Rick types. ``My dad is the father of the century.''
And Dick got something else out of all this too. Two years ago he had a mild heart attack during a race. Doctors found that one of his arteries was 95% clogged. ``If you hadn't been in such great shape,'' one doctor told him, ``you probably would've died 15 years ago.'' So, in a way, Dick and Rick saved each other's life.
Rick, who has his own apartment (he gets home care) and works in Boston, and Dick, retired from the military and living in Holland, Mass. , always find ways to be together. They give speeches around the country and compete in some backbreaking race every weekend, including this Father's Day.
That night, Rick will buy his dad dinner, but the thing he really wants to give him is a gift he can never buy.
``The thing I'd most like,'' Rick types, ``is that my dad sit in the chair and I push him once.''

Wow. Seriously, wow.

18 seconds

A whole yahoo group completely devoted to getting the people of the world to change their light bulbs ~ fantastic!

Check them out! I'm not planning to join the group, but their introduction alone is inspiring. In fact, here it is:

"Would you believe you can change the world in just 18 seconds? In the time it takes to fix a cup of coffee or tie your shoe laces, you can change a light bulb and have a profound impact on the environment.

Put simply, change a light bulb, change everything. If every American replaced just one light bulb with a compact fluorescent light bulb (CFL), together we'd save $8 billion in electricity costs and enough energy to light more than 1.5 million homes for an entire year. We’d also be preventing the greenhouse gas equivalent of nearly 2 million cars worth of emissions!"