Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Educational videos for teenage mothers




My fellow volunteer, Nienka the nurse has been working at Ma Savena, a teenage mothers's home. When she first started working there, the condition of the home was horrid. She said the place was filthy and depressing, and there was basically nothing great about it. All the girls had head lice, and the babies were wearing soiled clothes all day because they weren't wearing diapers!
The home is called a reform house even though those girls are the victims of rape. They are only 13-18 yrs old. They didn't do anything wrong, really. The girls are called inmates, and they are not allowed to go outside of the premise. Some of the girls stay at the home for more than a few years until they turn 18yrs old (sometime court orders that they stay at this home until they are old enough not to be the Gov's responsibility)... There is a law in place to prosecute the perpetrator, but it takes a long time. The girls tend to be hesitant to stick through the process because of the shame attached. The case quite often gets thrown out for silly reasons like a missing paperwork.
When I visited the home, a girl who was raped by her father just came back to the home with her baby. I didn't know what to say. Just too sad. She doesn't have a home to go back to either.
Nienka did fundraising in Netherlands, and she used the money to purchase new mattresses, pillows, diapers, personal hygiene items etc, etc. She made amazing changes to the home. She also taught the girls a lot about nutrition, hygiene tasks, baby care, cleaning of the house etc. She was worried that the girls and the staff might go back to their old habit once she leaves. So, we decided that we make education videos about nutrition, hygiene care, and cleaning to remind them what they need to do. We also wanted to do the videos for the new mothers arriving too. I was the camera woman, and Yoshi (another volunteer) helped as an interpreter. The videos are obviously made by amateurs, but they are funny and send clear messages. It was a fun project and also very nice to be able to work together with the fellow volunteers I respect a lot. I hope the girls will not forget what Nienka taught them.

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