Web page updated on:  06/24/2008

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POWDERED BABY FORMULA DESPERATELY NEEDED!

CAN $8.00 (US) REALLY SAVE A LIFE?
 (See below for answer)

Family Saludables - AIDS Clinic

    

     In this 3 1/2 minute video Valerie Nelson
     talks about the need for "Powdered
     baby formula".  (Very powerful)    

 

 

Familias Saludables (An HIV/AIDS Education, Identification and Treatment facility.) helps reduce the mother to child transmission rate of AIDS. With proper care, nutrition and treatment, babies, born to a mother testing positive at birth, have a 85% chance of testing negative at 6 months.

But to do that they must encourage the mothers, who are HIV positive, not to breast feed their babies.  That sounds simple but is complicated by two very important factors.  First, the cost of powdered baby formula exceeds what the mothers can pay.  Second, it has to be powdered baby formula because they have no electricity and hence, no refrigeration.

I have printed several emails from Valerie Nelson, who runs Family Saludables, that illustrate how critical the need is.  And be sure to read:  "Love, Death and Another Child" by Valerie Nelson

To: Robert Black
Sent: Tuesday, January 30, 2007 6:49 PM
Subject: Christmas of Angels

 
Dear Directors, Supporters, Team Members and Friends:
 
I just received this email from Valerie Nelson, the director of Familias Saludables, which is the A.I.D.S. education/identification/treatment clinic on Roatan.  I thought you would find it informative and spiritually strengthening!
 
Robert Black

 
Christmas of Angels
 
I don’t just believe in angels I talk to them and email them! Let me tell you about our Christmas here.
 
First of all, Thank you! To all of you who donated gifts for our children. Let me tell you the story this year. First of all the first shipment of donated presents from a bunch of angels : Norma, Val and Rita , Pam and Priscilla and Eleanor and Marilyn and Kailyn arrived in late November along with a shipment of formula and goodies from both Robert and Spartanburg Angels and  Dave from ProImage. Yaa, we think. Then we go to pick it up and our shipping company hands us a bill for six hundred US dollars. What?? “Our shipping is free! You promised us a year ago”. “Well,” they explain, “we budgeted for only so many donations for the year and we have exceeded that amount”. No amount of pleading or cajoling would change their mind. We could have free shipping again in the New Year until we hit our limit again, but this shipment and all the other Christmas shipments would have to be paid for. I didn’t have six hundred dollars. It was time to have faith in angels and sure enough, two days later, a friend of Dave from ProImage came for a visit and handed us an envelope, from Dave, with more than that amount in it, telling us to use it for baby formula and whatever else we needed! Yaa, another miracle is supplied by angels. At the same time, The Morgan Jayne Project sent us money for baby formula so we have enough formula, (with Robert’s from Spartanburg Angels) to get us through for three months (more angels!)  Now we go to see our customs guy who always lets us get it through customs for only a buck or two to find he has been fired and there is a whole new crew from Tegucigalpa who are customs “Nazis”. They want us to unpack every wrapped box and show them the contents. They also wanted all sort of information like the value of each box which was impossible for us to determine and we knew we were going to be charged duty according to the value of each box. My wonderful husband, who handled all the customs headaches, stood fast and told them that the value was indeterminable, that an impoverished child at Christmas with a gift and the life of a  HIV exposed baby could not be determined and dared them to put a value on it.. With a little talking they actually decided that Christmas presents for AIDS orphans, as well as formula for AIDS exposed babies, deserved to be customs free. So we didn’t have to pay anything at all. Yaa.
 We just went out, bought Christmas bags and decanted them all into the bags. Problem solved.
A week later the rest of your boxes from Penny, Paul and Inez, Cathy, Kate and Amy, Louise, Isobel and the everyone else arrived and we were just blown away by your generosity towards these children who most of you have never met,,,,.work of angels
Even with that we have had so many new children added to the program that we still didn’t have enough presents .. Oh, do I hear the fluttering of angel wings??? ..Boxes of beautiful stuffed animals arrived, donated by some two different American angels: Aaron and a Brownie troop, solved the problems and filled each bag.
Locally, the Americans here held a fund raiser for us and two other charities and called it “Concert for the Angels”...yaaaa more angels. My wonderful women’s team changed some of those peoples stereotypes of women with AIDS forever that night as they bravely took the stage, announced their name and that they were living with HIV and asked for respect, fairness and employment. We ended it with three little angels, children who had received formula, food and clothes from the program who took center stage and said a shy thank you.
 They are still figuring out how much they raised but they gave us enough money to have a great Christmas party complete with candy and fried chicken and gifts for all the women and children in our project. Wow! More angels.
Dec 23 saw the greatest Christmas party happen in our offices. For a few hours women and children could play and chat in the safety of a place where there is no discrimination and everyone was affected by AIDS. Matt, a reporter from Alberta had come down to see the project, offered to help so I put him to work helping eight year old Samuel, who is so ill, doing a craft. He later made Samuel’s life just that much more wonderful by leaving him money for a GameBoy ( oops another angel) Two wonderful brownie cakes flew in our door with another angel and then two of our favorite local angels, Chantel and Leon,  showed up with dessert for everyone, gingerbread cupcakes with sauce and whipped cream!
Dec 24 we went throughout the poorest part of the island and delivered toys to the families who didn’t make it in to our party and to other children chosen by the AIDS project in Punta Gorda. I am always reminded of the biblical story about loaves and fishes, as we realized after giving out presents, that many very poor kids had not been selected as their families had not been directly affected by AIDS but they also need toys. Another volunteer from England was with us and she kept saying to me, “ We cant give them all a toy, we don’t have enough, and I was cocky enough after doing this for five years to say to her, “just watch, you’ll see. It will be all right” and somehow our toy bag didn’t end until every child had seen Santa and gotten a toy. Klaus held child after child tenderly on his lap and I got to see the magic of Christmas again and again in so many beautiful brown eyes, Later, in three more communities, the miracle happened again and again. Every one of those toys was donated by one of you. Every one of them went to a child that it made a difference to.
Christmas day we had Matt dress as Santa and went into one of the poorest areas of town called “Little New York” and gave out every last toy, stuffed animal, or baseball hat that we had.
Well, after all that excitement and a busy a year. I was exhausted and looked forward to a week of rest. This year I actually closed the project down for the holidays for the first time. I really felt like I needed it, but of course fate has other ideas some times.  A few days after Christmas I went by the office to pick up something and found ten year old Ryan on my office steps. I have mentioned Ryan before, his mother Doris died this past January.  I have known since then that his grandma did not want him and is very abusive to him. He is often seen tied in the yard naked while she beats him (a barbaric discipline technique used here, but not illegal) I have been looking for a family for him but it has been hard to find one for a boy of that age.
I didn’t even manage to ask him what he was doing on my office steps at that time of night when he ran to my car and said “Can I come live with you, my Grammy threw me out?” After finding out he had been camped out on my steps for two days and nights I went to his grandmother’s place to have it confirmed, yes she did throw him out, she didn’t want him in her house any more. She is also looking after Ryan’s little brother Alex but she would keep him, she said, as he was a good boy. Ryan had been stealing so she didn’t want him back. There’s no doubt in my mind that Ryan had been stealing but when you’re turned out in the streets to play all day, never supervised or fed,  and you play with kids that steal, that’s what happens. I told Ryan he could come home with me until we found him a “forever family” Some of you may be groaning at this point thinking “Oh she did it again, her soft heart will make this another child in her family” but I ask all of you….which one of you would have left him on the office doorstep? I knew in my heart, as much as this little boy needed a family though, that we could not be it. We simply can not afford another child. We are living at poverty level now and another addition would be detrimental to our other children’s health. He was welcomed though by the other kids with enthusiasm and a much too ready barrage of support like the one from Niklaus as I walked in with him “Oh good, we’ll adopt you  Ryan ‘cause I need a new brother, Niko bugs me”.
 I called his errant father in New York the next day who basically told me that he had five kids there with his American wife and couldn’t do anything for Ryan. He did tell me though that he had a sister on the island who might take him. I tracked down the sister in Flowers Bay, a poor community on the north west part of the island. I discovered that she was already raising one of her brother’s other children, a boy of seven and couldn’t afford to take another one. Her brother had promised her support when she’d taken his other child at a month of age but never had come through. She told me that she had actually raised Ryan from two months of age to a year but then his mother had taken him back. While she was talking I detected that note of pain in her voice that all mothers recognize as the sound of love. Ah ha! The only person I had found that loved Ryan. This was exactly where Ryan belonged, with his family that loved him! How can we make this happen? Well I have two more angels, Pam and Priscilla from Alberta who have sent money monthly to support a child in the Swamp. This baby just recently went to live with an American friend when her home fell apart. They had told me to use the money where it was needed. I used most of it to provide care for a little family of three in the East end that’s headed by an eleven year old but now I knew where the rest of this money was destined for..to help Ryan get into his new family. It is midnight as I type this and Ryan will be going to live with his forever family tomorrow. It is unlikely he will ever know how the angels worked in his life
There are hundreds of kids on the island who got to experience the magic of Christmas, there are several families whose children are fed and clothed, all my HIV exposed babies have formula, at least for the next several weeks, and a child will be home where he belongs with family who loves him, all because of angels. Merry Christmas to all of you angels and THANK YOU. It is a privilege to know all of you!
Love,
Valerie

SEPTEMBER 19, 2006:  I recently asked Valerie two questions:

1.  When we help save a baby we are creating an orphan in a few years?  What is the average length of time the mother lives after the baby is born? 

    Answer:  Are you creating orphans// Not if the mom is treated.  If the mom is treated she will live 10 to 15 years at present and most likely a lot longer by then.  The untreated mom lives 9 months to two years.

2.   If a baby is born to an H. I. V.+  mother and they are not treated; what is the average length of time the baby will live?

    Answer:  Not all babies born to HIV+ moms get HIV. A baby born to a HIV+ mom will have a 48% chance of having HIV in Honduras if not treated ( 25% in America due to better diet, health care etc.).   If treated the baby has a less than 7% chance of having it (Our rate is presently 3% but the national rate is 7%.)  An untreated baby who develops it usually dies in the first six months but some of them (less than five per cent) seem to get by that hurdle and then don’t die until they are in the five to eight year old range. We have three kids like that right now, James who is 7 and will die in the next few months, Jack and Patsy who are 5 and 7 who will probably live a couple more years..  Well maybe not Jack; he has had a tough time lately.  Oh we also have Andrew who is seven as well and is quite ill. We have a three year old whose twin died at five months and we have a four year old who also has tumors on the nerves. We have no child over 8 who has HIV and lived who had it transferred prenatally. We have one 13 year old girl who got it during a rape when she was 9 and she is still alive, having a bit of a rough time now but I expect her to survive several more years.  She doesn’t count in the maternal transmission loop however. 

NOTE:  Powdered baby formula is an important item in the treated/prevention loop!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*****************************************************************
To: Robert Black

Sent: Thursday, April 21, 2005 6:16 PM
Subject: Re: Powdered baby formula
 
HI Robert, Your formula arrived yesterday, thank you! Just in the nick of time as we were down to our last two cans. The cost at Eldons' is 160 lempiras  for a 12 oz powdered regular sized can. That computes to about eight dollars  (US) which is more than most of our families here can afford of course.
THANK YOU!"
Valerie
******************************

Received: Monday June 27, 2005

Hi Robert, Congratulations on your status. Things seem to be going so well for you, that's so wonderful.

What we need desperately right now is once again baby formula but a specific one called Enfamil. One of our babies is 8 months old, a beautiful little girl with white skin, black hair and dark eyes. She was born HIV exposed but we have been able to reduce most of her risk factors. She has a very sensitive stomach and only will tolerate the one formula. Unfortunately she has completely exhausted our supply. If you have the ability to send us some that would be wonderful!
Take Care
Valerie
*************************

Received:  August 27, 2005

Hi,

After I returned from Canada a month ago I had a lot of clients waiting to see me. While I was still in Canada I had an email from an American pediatrician here who said she was sending an eight-month-old girl and her mom to see me as soon as I got back. A week later the Mom brought the baby in. The Mom, Teresa, had her baby gently propped up on a pillow in her arms. I took this frail child and laid her gently on my desk. Her belly was swollen; she was pale and breathing with difficulty. Her arms and legs were emaciated and the hanging skin suggested a recent weight loss rather than long-term malnutrition. Despite all this, if you looked carefully you could see she was once a pretty baby. Her Mom told me her name was Litzy (rhymes with Mitzy). Litzy had been in the hospital here for weeks with no sign of improvement. I could see her mouth was full of thrush, probably from too many antibiotics. It would have been very painful for her to eat. Her swollen belly suggested liver acites and her little “puff” breaths suggested heart failure. It was obvious she was dying. Teresa sat and talked as I rocked Litzy and suggested a couple last minute treatments. Tube feeding, drugs for the thrush and some AZT seemed like the best course of action. As we talked we both watched this baby make the bird like mouth gestures that I have seen too often in dieing babies. My office is one big open area with desks etc and a room in the back we use for storage and the pharmacy. This way clients are all mixed together which forces them to talk to each other, sometimes the best medicine. As we sat watching this child’s life slip away another of my clients came in with her child. This client looked at Litzy, asked her Mom how old she was and then shared that her daughter was also eight months old. Teresa stared at this other child in disbelief. At that moment it seemed almost! vulgar that there could be two eight months old so totally different. How could Litzy be this pale, weak, ten pounder while Stefani was a healthy, brown, and active twenty-five pounder? Realizing the difference, Stefanis' Mom then told Teresa that her baby was also very skinny a few months ago and “Miss Valerie make her fat”. I was seconds away from replying that this was a little different when I was shocked to realize it wasn’t. Stefani had come to us at three months in pretty well the same shape Litzy was in now. Lots of love attention, formula and medication had turned her into a whole different baby. I realized that my short trip to Canada had changed the way I was seeing things. I had forgotten that this is  not the land of poverty and death and frustration. This is the land of hope and miracles. This is the land where there is so much to do that you don’t take tiny steps you take huge leaps. I often think of all the amazing people! I know in Canada and the US and how their generosity has taken shape and bloomed here, saving so many babies, making an impact unheard of almost in developed countries. Sometimes I think our door should read “Miracles Happen Here Courtesy of Canadian Donors!”

Teresa looked wistfully at Stefani and then down at Litzy said in a quiet voice “I waited too long to bring her, its too late” I don’t know if she did. and I fear she did,  but we will do everything we can to help her. It will take a miracle but miracles happen here every day. You have all made them happen! Thank you.

 

We have FIVE new babies on the program this week ,and we are desperate for baby formula or funds to buy baby formula . If you can help, even with one can please email me or send it!

Thank you, Valerie
********************************

I am so happy that Spartanburg Angels and you, our supporters, can be a part of this wonderful, life-saving mission.  Our mission team met with Valarie Nelson during the last week of May and the first week of June 2006 and I had quite some time to speak with her about her program.  Please read the following letter I received from Valerie on June 9, 2006.

 

Text Box: The Story of Wendy   Wendy is a Mom in our program who has a baby, Jorge, who is now ten months old and the sweetest little thing. She also has a two year old daughter and a seven year old daughter. Wendy first came into our program very shy and quiet when she was still pregnant with Jorge. She had discovered in a routine testing that she was positive and that her husband had been cheating in her..a lot to take in when you’re about to give birth. She was very ashamed to be HIV+ and would not talk to anyone in our office besides me. Well, Wendy has come a long way! Jorge is HIV negative thanks to the program, and Wendy recently joined our speakers’ team to go out and talk about living HIV+. Recently we had some great donations come in from several donors so Wendy was the recipient of some of those donations. The other day she was trying to get my attention in a busy office and so I took her aside to talk. She was holding cans of formula she’d just gotten for Jorge and a box of disposable diapers. She looked at me and said “ You have made my children safe, you don’t know how much that has helped me” I looked at her as she had tears in her eyes and she went on to tell me how when she first came she felt all alone, exhausted and her every thought was for her children. She said “I know I can come here and Jorge will always have milk and the kids will always have beans and rice and and we will always have medicine and clothes and school books for Faviola. You made my children safe so I could think about other things like how people here think of this disease and now I can fight to make it better so my kids don’t have to fight that battle” . YOU have done this, YOU have not only saved her babys’ life, you have helped her become the unashamed advocate she is today. Last week she met with the First Lady of Honduras and told her what this country needs. YOU have helped her fight with passion and dignity. With your gifts to the program you have made a huge difference in this small third world country. Thank You, Valerie  

Our goal, at Spartanburg Angels, is to develop a steady stream of powdered baby formula, for this life saving program,  so Valerie will not have to worry about running out and can take on more patients.  This translates into saving 'precious little lives'.

We need to be able to supply 24 cans (13 oz. size) of any general powdered baby formula and 4 cans of Enfamil for the sensitive babies, each month.  Would you help?

You can help us save those little lives by donating just 1 can (12 to 13 oz. size) of powdered baby formula.  Or perhaps you can do even more - -  Contact us and let us know if you would pledge 1 can a year, 1 can every 3 months, or 1 can each month, or even more. 
Saving lives begins with the first can!

Love, Death and another Child   (This letter is from Valerie Nelson, Director of Familas Saludables.)  Received:  January 17, 2006

Hi, I’m feeling an overwhelming need to share with all of you so here goes a new update report. Our Christmas was wonderful, thank you for all of you who donated presents for all the project kids. My wonderful daughters from Canada joined us and helped so it was great. The program, of course, gets more and more clients weekly, and sometimes it is actually hard to keep track of them. I have those moments of panic when someone walks in and I have to try to retrieve his or her names (yes, yes its true I just hit the big 50 so my memory is slipping!). Of course that makes the old clients I know well all the more welcome as there’s no difficulty in identifying them. One of those clients is a woman named Doris who has four kids including an 8-year-old boy and a 4-year-old boy and two teenage daughters. I’ve known Doris for three years but haven’t really considered us as being close. Doris herself is only 33 so she started young. Doris is now dieing. She came to our Christmas party and collapsed the next day and has slowly been slipping away from us. She is now almost comatose, slipping in and out of consciousness as people visit her. Last week when I visited her I was surprised as I kissed her goodbye that she came to for a minute, looked me in the eyes and said: I love you Valerie’ My heart was touched but it surprised me as I feel that those are the things you save to say to your children or friends when you’re trying to conserve your last energy and to give it an outsider seemed amazingly generous.. It sent me on a personal quest to wonder, “What is love?” That night at dinner I discussed it with my daughters and of course got all different opinions, C What creates love? Can you love someone you don’t really know or do we do just love parts of people? Do we all exist to be loved?

Many times in my life I’ve come across these philosophical questions that always emerge to have a purpose somewhere down the road so I shouldn’t have been surprised when this one came answered in the form of an eight year old girl. Two days later (this past Friday) I learned another one of my clients had died; one I didn’t know well. One of my colleagues approached me and asked if I knew that her child, an island child, was literally out on the street. A kind second cousin had found her sleeping by the side of the road and had taken her in for a few days but had no money or space for her in her tiny hovel. This cousin was now begging us to find her a home, something that we knew that was going to be difficult for a child so old. I had only seen this child in passing so on Friday when she showed up in my office with all of her possessions packed in a small grocery store bag I took a good look at her for the first time. Instantly my heart filled with love for this little girl. I didn’t need to know who she was or even her name. I looked in her eyes and saw pain and fear and so much yearning to be loved that my heart broke open and I knew the answer to my questions. Yes you can love someone you don’t know. One heart touching another creates love, and yes we can exist without love but what’s’ the point?

So we have a new addition to our family. Her name is Atisha; she’s eight years old and as sassy as they come. She bosses around the other kids and even takes off her sandal to hit them if they are lippy. She makes her bed and brushes her teeth first thing without being told and went to school for the first time ever yesterday. She has spent the past three years sleeping in the bathroom of a bar her grandmother owns, a bathroom so putrid that most of us would not even pee in it, she has gone to bed hungry every night of her life except once that she recounts when she found a half eaten box of fried chicken and ate it until she threw up. She is going to give us grief like nobodies business, I can tell all ready, but also she will give us love, and isn’t that were all here for?

WOULD YOU LIKE TO HELP? 

* See how two church youth groups are helping *

There are three ways you can participate in this "life saving" effort:

1.  If you live in the Spartanburg, SC area just call us and we will be glad to arrange pick up.         Robert Black, President
      Spartanburg Angels
      864/621-9774

2.  If you live a distance away and wish to donate a quantity of powdered baby formula, contact us and we can give you the address in the US to ship it to rather than ship it to us.  From that point the donations are shipped 'free' to Roatan, Honduras.  
Email: achristianplace@charter.net   Email link from Powdered Baby Food page,

3.  If you would like to donate to that part of our ministry you can use the procedures below.  Just put "POWDERED BABY FORMULA" in the "Payment for" box.
                                         

CLICK ON THE ICON BELOW


IF YOU ARE MAKING A DIRECTED DONATION  TO THE POWDERED BABY FORMULA  PART OF OUR MISSION PLEASE INDICATE IN THE "PAYMENT FOR" BLOCK

You do not need a Papal account to make a donation.  You can use one of the following credit/debit cards:
                    

 

HOW ARE WE DOING?

 

DONATED

DATE

PLEDGED
Anonymous 4 cans Enfamil-Infantcare
4 cans regular

8/7/05

  
Anonymous 18 cans regular

8/11/05

  
Anonymous 8 cans Enfamil-Infantcare
6 cans regular

9/01/05

  
Anonymous 3 cans Enfamil-Infantcare
6 cans regular

9/05/05

  
Linda Morgan 1 large can and
1 regular can

11/15/05

  
Tempos (RHBC) Large case of misc. cans of baby formula.

3/1/06

  
River Hills Baptist Church Large quantity of lancets used for H.I.V. testing.

5/20/2006

  
Cheryl Malone $500.00 donation

9/23/06

  
RHBC youth groups
(Fund-raising in progress)		  

Begun
9/13/2006

Ending date:
11/18/06

 Go to this web address for current progress on this project.

http://www.spartanburgangels.com/Changeforachange.htm

RAISED:  $1,338.85  Purchased and shipped 54 - 51.4 oz. cans of powdered baby formula.  11/21/2006
Teresa Skipper $25.00 donation

11/18/2006

  
       
Can we place your name here????      

Robert Black, President
Spartanburg Angels
864/621-9774

Or Email: achristianplace@charter.net    Email link from Powdered Baby Food page,