DURBAN – The Covid-19 pandemic and July civil unrest has left The Baby Home – Durban North, buckling at the knees and now load shedding has thrown them a curve ball but they are still standing.
Crisis parent at The Baby Home Jo Teunissen said it was an awful mission planning around babies when it comes to load shedding.
“We’ve got to plan well in advance,” Teunissen said.
She said when load shedding is between feeding time for six babies, it meant they have to warm their food and emergency lights are charged so the ladies can see what they are doing and get things done for the babies.
She also said the heat was another issue because the babies have to be cool enough and if not, they are moved outside because it gets very hot with lots of little bodies in the room with no cooling systems.
Teunissen said for almost two years it has been a struggle for them with civil unrest, Covid-19 pandemic and national lockdown.
She said a lot of people who would have been their regular financial supporters, people who own shops and would give them material items for the babies, their businesses have not been doing well or they lost their businesses during the looting or Covid-19.
“For a while we've been running at a loss and we had, at one stage, look at making quite a few cutbacks on expenses and trying to see where we could save money to be able to cover all of our costs. Also with Covid we haven't been able to host any of our normal fundraising events … We’ve had to get quite creative in what we do and how we try and generate money to come in,” Teunissen said.
She said their capacity was always six babies and that was the number they generally had but that can change with adoptions and a simple phone call.
Last weekend, the baby home, where the babies stay, received a mini make-over.
Teunissen said she had previously had her office painted but when she moved from her office to the baby home, she noticed it needed a fresh coat of paint.
“I had Prince as my painter who painted at our house and I said these are all the things you need to do but I can only give you one day. So for the ladies to move all the babies out for more than a day is a mission. So Prince planned everything, came in with a team and literally redid that place in one day. He was an absolute legend,” she said.
They spent between R2 500 and R3 000.
Teunissen said there were many ways people could lend a helping hand.
They needed money to run, pay salaries and school fees.
They also take in children, some of which have special needs with disabilities, these include physio bills, occupational therapy, speech therapy and more.
She said word of mouth was important and if people knew about The Baby Home, if they were looking for a physiotherapist, someone might know a physiotherapist willing to do some pro bono work for them or is looking to do something as part of the charity initiative through their company.
“Getting people to know about us and talk about us so that the more people know about us the more of a database we've got in terms of people we can ask for help,” Teunissen said.
She said there were also expenses regarding the running of the house. Products for the babies like nappies, wet wipes, formula, food or Purity, all the way to our cleaning products, sanitisers – making sure that everything is always clean.
“Then obviously financially. We run an initiative, we call it Our 100 Club, where we try to get as many people as possible to do a monthly debit order of R100. For most people it is pretty affordable,” Teunissen said.
“With a whole load of people who are doing R100 donation, those all add up and really make a huge difference towards our day to day running costs.”
Teunissen said they were a fully registered non-profit organisation and public benefit organisation that was BEE compliant.
If people did monthly donations, or do donate goods, they are able to issue people with their Section 18a tax certificate. So people who support them, an individual or a company, get the tax benefits of donating to us as a charity.
Daily News