by Jennifer Burden | May 2, 2016 | 2016, Maternal Health
Did you know we have a World Mom on board who is very active in running the Promise Walk for Preeclampsia? Sarah Hughes in the USA, has organized a walk each year for the past 5 years and has raised 10’s of thousands of dollars for the Preeclampsia Foundation.
World Mom, Sarah Hughes, and her family at the Promise Walk for Preeclampsia in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the USA.
What lit the fire under her to get things started? Check out her initial post for World Moms Blog in 2012 about her experience with preeclampsia, which can be fatal in pregnant mothers worldwide. The symptoms are high blood pressure and protein in the urine. For more about preeclampsia, head on over to the Preeclampsia Foundation.
And if you’re on twitter, join us tonight to help us raise awareness or maybe just grab a great giveaway from Happy Super Foods or Udderly Smooth for the cause! 😉
The hashtag is #PreAm16. You can follow along by doing a search on Twitter for that hashtag anytime during or after the party. To join in the chat, come during party time — 9pm EDT. I will be on Twitter along with some of our World Moms. Hope to see you there!
Can’t make the party? It’s not too late to donate to Sarah’s upcoming Promise Walk for Preeclampsia this weekend!
Jennifer Burden, Founder and CEO, World Moms Blog
You can also check out Sarah’s personal blog at Finnegan and the Hughes!
P.S. (And, keep up the great work, Sarah! We are proud of you!)
Jennifer Burden is the Founder and CEO of World Moms Network, an award winning website on global motherhood, culture, human rights and social good. World Moms Network writes from over 30 countries, has over 70 contributors and was listed by Forbes as one of the “Best 100 Websites for Women”, named a “must read” by The New York Times, and was recommended by The Times of India.
She was also invited to Uganda to view UNICEF’s family health programs with Shot@Life and was previously named a “Global Influencer Fellow” and “Social Media Fellow” by the UN Foundation. Jennifer was invited to the White House twice, including as a nominated "Changemaker" for the State of the World Women Summit. She also participated in the One Campaign’s first AYA Summit on the topic of women and girl empowerment and organized and spoke on an international panel at the World Bank in Washington, DC on the importance of a universal education for all girls. Her writing has been featured by Baby Center, Huffington Post, ONE.org, the UN Foundation’s Shot@Life, and The Gates Foundation’s “Impatient Optimists.” She is currently a candidate in Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs in the Executive Masters of Public Affairs program, where she hopes to further her study of global policies affecting women and girls.
Jennifer can be found on Twitter @JenniferBurden.
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by Katinka | Sep 29, 2014 | Belgium, Life, Parenting, Uncategorized
On Wednesday the 3rd of September, our oven broke down in the middle of a pizza. We only have pizza about once a year, so the kids were looking forward to it like crazy. Italians, be warned, what comes next must be hard to digest. I warmed up the pizza in the microwave and then baked it in a regular frying pan. The idea was to get it warm and have at least the bottom a bit crunchy. The bottom turned out almost black and the entire thing looked inedible. The kids loved their very special pizza topped with extra cheese and ketchup to cover up the burnt taste.
On Thursday the 4th of September, our cooking range died on me in the middle of green beans and rice. I half expected it, since it was attached to the oven. I wanted to give up, but then my daughter came along. She secretly turned the oven on, thinking it a toy after it broke. For some reason, that reactivated the hot plate on top of it! Thanks to my mischievous five year old, we had a decent meal after all.
She told everyone she saved dinner that day, strutting around proud like a peacock.
On Friday the 5th of September, we asked my teen sister to babysit and went to my employer’s corporate party, all the while discussing how to rearrange our kitchen. We felt like we could handle our bad luck for a blissful twelve hours.
On Saturday the 6th of September, our car broke down in the middle of the road to my parent’s home. It stopped, just like that. We had to find another car and take my sister home, which made my husband late for work. His work being to clean up the party we went to the night before. Mere coincidence made me help dismantle my own employer’s party, to get things done in time. The kids had a great time, being allowed to help out dad and being at mommy’s party at the same time. They didn’t mind that they were the only ones singing and dancing in an empty tent.
On Sunday the 7th of September, I decided to bake some fine Belgian waffles. I had made a new school year’s resolution of baking cookies for the kids to take to school every week. Because the green me wants to lessen our piles of plastic waste, because the control freak in me wants to follow up on their sugar consumption, and because our daughter is just very picky when it comes to cookies (I’m not complaining). I wouldn’t let the broken oven break my resolution after just one week, so waffles it was. Broken crumbled pieces of waffles anyway. Not a single one came out in less than 23 pieces. The kids thought it extremely cool to have a little box full of waffle crumbs to take to school all week. They figured the tinier the pieces were, the more waffle could fill their snack box.
On Monday the 8th of September, I found almost all of our chickens gone. One was still there, without her head. I found her inside our completely closed den. No holes, no open door. The predator went in and out anyway. I told the kids a very cute little fox was probably very happy with his mommy’s endeavours. I also promised them I would get us a pig instead of those vulnerable little chickens. A very big one. We’ll call her Foxy.
On Tuesday the 9th of September, we bought ourselves a new car. The kind of family car I’d been wishing for, even before the previous one. Our son approved because the new car is close to his favorite colour, black. Our daughter approved even more because it had sliding doors in the back. No more accidents with neighbouring cars for her.
On Wednesday the 10th of September, I found a new kitchen when I came home from work. My husband had worked like crazy to surprise me. The oven and plates were not connected yet, but I was too overwhelmed to mind. We were getting used to cucumbers and cold salmon wraps for dinner anyway. It was a good exercise for the predicted power blackouts during winter as well.
On Thursday the 11th of September, I felt our luck was turning. We had been able to found benefits in all of our misfortunes. New car, new kitchen, new pet. Fate gave us Ethiopian New Year on that day. It’s liberating to state in the middle of 2014, that you’re heading for the year 2007.
It feels as if you can start all over.
That morning, our Ethiopian daughter went to school in her traditional white dress to show off. Our son wore his Ethiopian scarf for mere coolness. In the middle of my last science policy meeting of that day, I was already musing about our cozy evening to come, picking yellow flowers and having popcorn, as tradition prescribes in our daughter’s birth country.
That very moment, my husband called. I was to head for the hospital.
My little princess’s pristine white dress was covered in blood. She had had a nasty fall and an even nastier hole right between her eyes. They had waited for me to arrive before doing the stitching, because she desperately needed her mommy. I will never be able to wash away the image of that incredibly deep hole in her forehead. Nor of the terror in her eyes when the syringe for the local anaesthetics came by.
When it was all over, we promised her pizza. One from the local Italian, because the oven still didn’t work. Also because we were too exhausted to think of anything creative at 8 pm.
In the car back home, my daughter told me she couldn’t believe how lucky she was.
I thought I’d misunderstood.
I was having a very hard time staying composed. After this unbelievable week, my stress buffer was in shambles.
And my daughter, covered in deep stitches and steristrips, told me she felt so lucky?
“Of course,” she said. “We’ll have pizza night two weeks in a row!”
Do your kids also help you get past the most dreadful passages in your life? Can we learn from their ability to find innocent fun on every occasion, no matter how bad?
This is an original post to World Moms Blog by K10K from The Penguin and The Panther.
Photo credit: Live Italian. This picture has a creative commons attribution license.
If you ask her about her daytime job, Katinka will tell you all about the challenge of studying the fate of radioactive substances in the deep subsurface. Her most demanding and rewarding job however is raising four kids together with five other parents, each with their own quirks, wishes and (dis)abilities. As parenting and especially co-parenting involves a lot of letting go, she finds herself singing the theme song to Frozen over and over again, even when the kids are not even there...
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by World Moms Blog | Apr 30, 2014 | Maternal Health, World Motherhood
Have you ever had preeclampsia? Or know someone who did? Come learn more and help us raise awareness on this rapid disorder that affects moms and babies! Sarah Hughes, now a World Moms Blog contributor, once wrote a guest post for World Moms Blog, “What is Preeclampsia?”. We are honored to be holding a second annual twitter party with Sarah and the Preeclampsia Foundation to help raise awareness for maternal health!
World Moms Blog is an award winning website which writes from over 30 countries on the topics of motherhood, culture, human rights and social good. Over 70 international contributors share their stories from around the globe, bonded by the common thread of motherhood and wanting a better world for their children.
World Moms Blog was listed by Forbes Woman as one of the "Best 100 Websites for Women 2012 & 2013" and also called a "must read" by the NY Times Motherlode in 2013. Our Senior Editor in India, Purnima Ramakrishnan, was awarded the BlogHer International Activist Award in 2013.
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by Jennifer Burden | Jan 16, 2014 | 2014, Social Good, World Moms Blog, World Voice
So what kind of impact can you make with a Twitter party for social good?
Last night, after our #Moms4MDGs chat, we ran a TweetReach report.
In the past week, our collaborative efforts under the #Moms4MDGs hashtag have reached over 1.1 million Twitter accounts and made over 5.8 million Twitter impressions. There were also 160 contributors to the hashtag and 569 retweets. Tweeters from North America, South America, Europe and Africa joined in!
The #Moms4MDGs campaign was announced last July at the BlogHER conference’s International Activist’s Panel by World Moms Blog Senior Editor, Purnima Ramakrishnan, in Chicago, Illinois, USA. We were answering the call to action to keep moms engaged with the world’s goals on topics such as eradicating extreme poverty and empowering women and girls. There are 8 Millennium Development Goals, and we have been covering one per month and have teamed up with a different organization each month that works year-round toward a particular goal.
The topic of yesterday’s #Moms4MDGs chats was on the UN’s Millennium Development Goal #6, to combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases. The key to tackling the world’s most pressing problems is teamwork. In the first party, we were joined by cohosts, Multicultural Kid Blogs, InCulture Parent Magazine, Girls Globe and our featured organization of the month, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, who tweeted from @gateshealth.
World Moms Blog and our contributors got the party started by welcoming guests!
Then we passed the baton to cohost Multicultural Kid Blogs, who educated us on the targets for HIV/AIDS and statistics on progress and what still needs to and can be done to fight the disease.
(By the way, the answer is c.)
This was a very popular and important tweet from the HIV/AIDS discussion:
Next, the baton was passed to cohost InCulture Parent Magazine, who announced the targets for malaria, the seriousness of the disease, and what can be done to help.
The UN Foundation and their campaign, Nothing But Nets, entered the twitter feed, which was really helpful to the conversation.
And the smart people chimed in!
Great tweets on malaria from the PM chat:
Some moms were already connecting with Nothing But Nets during the chat about getting their children involved in #MDG6! (This made us feel great!!)
And more great conversations!
And…
Then, cohost Girls Globe took the baton and asked the party some powerful questions to stir up ideas and action towards #MDG6.
The Shot@Life campaign was also present and invited people to join them in the fight against disease and to become a Shot@Life champion when Girls Globe asked how moms of the world could get involved to reach #MDG6 goals.
And Girls Globe brought up tech and MDG goals!
Our interview was cut short during the first party with @gateshealth, but it left everyone something to come back for later that evening! Later, we learned how the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation came about and more about their global blog, Impatient Optimists.
And, they provided a mind-blowing statistic on polio, given that India was just declared polio-free for 3 years in a row this week.
But, perhaps, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s biggest, most powerful message on #MDG6 was this:
With two months still left in the 8 month #Moms4MDGs campaign, we are thrilled about how much MDG8, a global partnership for development, has played a role in all the parties throughout. World Moms Blog is proud to be meeting interesting people on Twitter, connecting with other websites geared up to make a difference and partnering and featuring foundations that are making year-long contributions to the vital goals to end extreme poverty and increase global health that the world has set.
Our next twitter party takes place on February, 15th, 2014 on MDG7, the environment from 1-2pm EST. We hope you will come out and join the momentum. Mark your calendars…!
This is an original post by World Moms Blog Founder, Jennifer Burden in New Jersey, USA.
Photo credits to the author.
Jennifer Burden is the Founder and CEO of World Moms Network, an award winning website on global motherhood, culture, human rights and social good. World Moms Network writes from over 30 countries, has over 70 contributors and was listed by Forbes as one of the “Best 100 Websites for Women”, named a “must read” by The New York Times, and was recommended by The Times of India.
She was also invited to Uganda to view UNICEF’s family health programs with Shot@Life and was previously named a “Global Influencer Fellow” and “Social Media Fellow” by the UN Foundation. Jennifer was invited to the White House twice, including as a nominated "Changemaker" for the State of the World Women Summit. She also participated in the One Campaign’s first AYA Summit on the topic of women and girl empowerment and organized and spoke on an international panel at the World Bank in Washington, DC on the importance of a universal education for all girls. Her writing has been featured by Baby Center, Huffington Post, ONE.org, the UN Foundation’s Shot@Life, and The Gates Foundation’s “Impatient Optimists.” She is currently a candidate in Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs in the Executive Masters of Public Affairs program, where she hopes to further her study of global policies affecting women and girls.
Jennifer can be found on Twitter @JenniferBurden.
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by Purnima Ramakrishnan | Sep 10, 2013 | Purnima, Vaccines, World Moms Blog, World Voice
Host a GAVI Global Tea Party!
Who wants to add a spin on their regular ladies night out?
We all do!
How about throwing a GAVI Global Tea Party? It’s easy!
The GAVI Alliance is a public and private global health partnership which carries out vaccination programs in developing countries. And the GAVI Global Tea Party is a grass-roots movement of people talking around the world over tea, about immunizations for children in developing nations. There is even a documentary being made out of these international tea parties.
Want to join the movement? Here’s how to host a GAVI-WMB tea party:
- Brew some tea, get out your tea-cups, throw in some snacks, cakes or anything you prefer to eat with a cuppa!
- Next, fire up the computer and fire up some GAVI videos featuring mothers and children around the world benefitting from well needed immunization programs. These videos are great conversation starters! You can discuss what you saw in the videos and your views about spreading awareness.
- Just get talking!
Just three steps – it is as simple as that. Host a party, drink tea, talk about immunizations, ask how interested your guests are about continuing the conversation on immunizations.
Your tea party can be as varied as you want it to be. You can have a minimum of 2 people to 50 people, or however many people, talking about helping to save the lives of children. Did you know that a child dies from a vaccine preventable disease every 20 seconds? Consider helping us shout out about how important it is to have these conversations on global health.
Ideas for your own party can include your own ethnic or geographical spin on it! Or you can just do something as simple as hanging around in a coffee shop for just 5 minutes to view and discuss the videos or host a party in your child’s school for half a day along with the other parents.
There are no hard and fast rules about how you go about raising awareness to help immunize children, many who lack access to vaccines and good medical care.
Some World Moms Bloggers have already hosted their own GAVI-WMB tea parties! Jennifer Burden, founder of World Moms Blog hosted the first party. Allison Charelston of New York did a very memorable party. Lady E of Indonesia did her party in a very scenic place with very beautiful china cups. From India, I did a very informal tea party with my neighbours.
Check all the above links to see how each blogger did it her own way.
Join the GAVI Global Tea Party movement and help save the lives of children in your own fun tea-party kind of way! And…why tea? It’s available in most places on the globe, something to bring us and our compassion to the cause together.
Social Good for international mothers and children efforts are a part of our collaborative mission statement that the writers created at World Moms Blog. We are happy to volunteer this grass-roots awareness idea that we created especially with the work of The GAVI Alliance in mind!
In fact, this tea party was the first international opportunity for social good in the long list of volunteerism for World Moms Blog. We’d like to revive it and get the ball rolling again!
Do you want to be a part of the oldest and first social good initiative of World Moms Blog? Contact me, Purnima Ramakrishnan or Jennifer Burden at worldmomsblog@gmail.com, and we shall guide you in this socially conscious spin on your next gathering!
This is an original World Moms Blog Post written by Purnima RamaKrishnan in India.
