Help Prospective Mothers in Papua New Guinea

The Mommyhood Memos Bloggers for Birth KitsSometimes it’s amazing how much you can help, through something so little…

In rural Papua New Guinea one in seven women die in childbirth! Yep, that’s right, 1 in 7 women die in childbirth! That’s a shocking statistic to say the least. To give birth to a child a mother has a 15% chance of dying, can you imagine?

A friend of mine, Adriel Booker, in Australia works with YWAM Ships, a ministry that is currently working on delivering medical help into Papua New Guinea. She is a Mom, blogger and fellow YWAMer who has a strong passion for helping other mothers in need. To help expectant mothers in Papua New Guinea she has started a program called Bloggers for Birth Kits to help reduce maternal mortality in rural Papua New Guinea.

The way to help is so simple that anyone can do it…

For as little as a $2.00 donation you can purchase a Birth Kit. The Birth Kit is very simple, but according to the Birthing Kit Foundation can greatly help to reduce the incidence of infant and maternal mortality and morbidity. The kit includes:

  • 1 plastic sheet to provide a clean birthing surface
  • 1 bar of soap for clean hands during the birthing process and to clean the umbilical stump
  • 1 pair of plastic gloves for clean hands
  • 1 sterile scalpel blade to cut the umbilical cord
  • 3 cords / pieces of strong string to tie the umbilical chord
  • 5 gauze squares to clean the baby and mother

The kit is simple, yet effective. Adriel made up her own (which you can watch on the video at the bottom of this post), but I think the most effective way for us to help is to donate.

If you do want to help with this great project, and for only $2.00 who wouldn’t want to help, you can read more about it at Bloggers for Birth Kits.

This post was originally posted on my personal blog at Help Prospective Mothers in Papua New Guinea – Bill Hutchison

Why So Quiet on Renovate Australia?

If you are a regular reader of this site you might be wondering why things have been so quiet lately. Well, they say a picture is worth a thousands words so here you go …

sold-house-23

Yep, we finally finished most of the renovations, sold the house and moved.

Like our house renovations we don’t like to do things half way, so we didn’t do a small move, we actually moved to the other side of the world, Canada …

the-new-hutchison-home

I still have literally dozens, if not hundreds of stories from our time renovating our house in Townsville, Australia. I’m hoping to somehow find the time to record them on this site before I forget them, but at the moment my family and my work with Youth With A Mission (YWAM) is taking up pretty much all of my time.

We purchased a house in Canada that we thought wouldn’t need much work, but of course that never works out quite as planned…