Abandoned Babies Part II - Africa

Working at Viva’s office in Kampala, I hear a lot about abandoned babies through the city-wide network, CRANE (we’re in the same office!) Nearly 200 babies are abandoned every year in Kampala alone, the capital city of Uganda. One lady I’ve met, Grace, has a special story about an abandoned baby though – Grace became a mother when someone else didn’t want her child.

Grace remembers falling in love with baby Nabulungi as soon as she met her in the hospital where she works. Nabulungi was tiny – a premature baby of only a kilogram – and the fact that her mother had abandoned her at the hospital made her seem even smaller. “Seeing her arrive to the world, so vulnerable and small, I bonded with this little one that needed so much attention and care,” recalls Grace.

For the first few weeks of Nabulungi’s life, Grace’s job was to care for her. She wasn’t sure where it would lead. As the time drew near for Nabulungi to leave the hospital, Grace couldn’t face the fact that ‘her’ tiny baby would be going into an institution… she needed a family home. 

Abandoned Children Part I - Latin America

Carolina was born to a mother struggling desperately with a drug addiction. There seemed to be little hope for her future. Like 40 million other children in Latin America, she faced a life of abuse and possibly living on the streets. But now she is safe with me and my wife, safely part of our family. Let me tell you how that happened.

The life expectancy of a Latin American street child is only four years, and they usually succumb to hunger, drug addiction or violence. Yet fostering has never taken root as a solution to Latin America’s growing number of street children. Fostering a child can be expensive for parents struggling to care for their own children, and there are also many emotional issues that foster children bring with them, as a result of their previous family lives.

Running for Their Lives

Remember this? “Imagine walking down an alley in the red light district of Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital city – filled with brothels, karaoke bars and massage parlours. Lined up on each doorstep are countless pairs of shoes belonging to the women forced to work inside. Looking closer you can see that a sickening number of these shoes are very small, belonging to the little girls who are either being raised by prostitutes or have been forced to become sex workers themselves.”

Viva posted that back in May. But long before that my heart was broken by the hundreds of thousands of girls in Cambodia who are in this exact situation. I don’t even want to imagine it. But child sexual exploitation in Cambodia is something the world can’t avoid imagining. We need to be confronted with it, address it, end it, and then help to heal the girls who have gone through it.