• PM Family

PM We Care: Help us to support mothers in Sierra Leone 💖

Published: 30/04/2021

As you know, or some of you may have forgotten 😉, Mother’s Day is just around the corner. Together with World Vision, we came up with the idea to connect mothers from all over the world and show them our love and appreciation. “How would you do that?”, you might ask
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Well, from May 1st to 9th, PM We Care will donate 1 Euro for every FitLine IB5 purchased during this time to World Vision’s Baby-Starter pack project in Sierra Leone. This special Mother’s Day Week is all about showing your Mom how much you care about her and share this love with mothers-to-be in Sierra Leone.

Supporting mothers and children in Sierra Leone is one of the many projects close to our hearts. Here, decades of war continue to negatively impact the lives of local people to this day. The most recent Ebola outbreak took the lives of more than 70% of infected people, and the long-term influence of the Covid-19 pandemic is very hard to grasp. Sadly, children’s rights are almost absent in everyday life and the child mortality rate of under-5-year-olds is at an alarming rate of 80%. These are things we need to work on! For years, PM We Care supports World Vision with their work towards strengthening children’s rights in Sierra Leone by educating parents and the public. Furthermore, World Vision are actively teaching families in disease-prevention and hygiene. The PM We Care donations help to support about 120 sponsored children in Sierra Leone.

World Vision maintains special birthing centres for pregnant women as well as act as advisors on the political stage to assist the Chiefdom Leaders in the law-making process. We are very excited to see that two new by-laws have been installed in late 2020 to directly counter child mortality and further support the education of children. With the Zero-Delivery at Home or in the Bush act, fathers, town elders, and midwifes will be fined if a pregnant woman does not deliver her child in a medical birthing facility. Additionally, the School-Attendance act lines up fines for parents whose children were caught outside of school at school-hours (to help with fieldwork, for example). Due to these two by-laws and the local support of the Chiefs and elders, we can guarantee effectiveness. Latest studies even suggest that there is de facto no more home or bush-birthing in Sierra Leone (World Vision).

Midwife and mother-to-be in a birthing centre

Our efforts in Sierra Leone are also linked to these by-laws since they were ratified in late 2020. To ensure a healthy and safe start into life, we provide pregnant women with Baby-Starter packs which are handed out by medical birthing centres. This further incentivizes mothers to deliver at these health centres. To qualify for a Starter pack, they need to get 8 preventive medical check-ups and deliver their child in the birthing centre or a clinic. The Baby-Starter pack contains many essentials for the early life of children, like blankets, hygiene equipment, and many more. Additionally, the mothers are supported by World Vision’s Family Planning program.

“My husband couldn’t buy me all of this, I am so excited!” – Mariama Aruna with her newborn son Bassie received one of the first Baby-Starter packs this year

Together with World Vision, we are looking forward to gifting many more Starter packs to mothers in Sierra Leone and help their children to a better start into life. By supporting our Mother’s Day Campaign, all of you are part of this! THANK YOU!

💖 To all the mothers out there: You’re the best! 💖