Support a Baby, Build a Family!

Dear friends and incredible supporters of TLC.

It is with great sadness that we communicate that TLC will come to an end, unless there is dramatic intervention. After 25 years of dedicated, passionate advocacy for the right of every baby to a family, it is our privilege to know that over 900 babies never needed to know the horror of lifelong institutional care.

Many of you have followed our challenges over the last few years but here are a few of the big ones that each added their own weight to the problem:

• Insufficient income. Despite our best efforts to create a financially stable institution, the costs increased faster than we could cover with donations. The lack of proper State support and the rejection of our R4 million lotto application at the very last hurdle was a huge set back.
• The increasingly hostile attitude of politicians around the world toward adoption and the increasing incapacity of State Social Service structures has increased the average length of stay for children at TLC from 6 months to between 25 and 33 months. This has a huge impact on the investment needed to maintain the high quality of care for the 36 children at TLC.
• Sadly, the proverbial straw that broke the camels back is the damaged relationship between TLC’s founder, Thea Jarvis and the rest of the management team at TLC.

Our current situation is that we are about US$ 72,000 (R1 million) in debt, with costs piling up daily, as we are US$ 26,000 (R350,000) short every month of what we need to cover our costs.

To even open the conversation of the child and youth care centre remaining operational, we need to pay off our debts of roughly US$ 72,000, and secure committed, reliable funding of US$ 26,000 a month (which equates to 3,500 adopted cots, please see attachments). You can donate today and get your donation matched by GlobalGiving, for Giving Tuesday.

Should we not receive this funding, we will bring TLC to a close in 6 months, which gives us time to facilitate the responsible closure of operations to ensure the best available outcome for each baby and staff member currently at TLC. 

We will keep you updated with the way forward as we walk this slow and painful path. Thank you for walking it with us.

Pippa Jarvis

Links:

• Donate today

Do you remember the first 1,000 days of your child’s life? At least the first 100 or so are probably a haze of feeding, catching a nap when you can, and so many diapers. So, so many diapers.

I remember thinking afterwards, when my baby was a toddler, that I was grateful she couldn’t remember that time of her life, because the bubbly I cracked open on her first birthday was more to celebrate that I’d kept her alive, than anything else.

However, while my daughter’s long-term memory hadn’t yet fully formed in those first 2.74 years, a growing body of scientific evidence shows that the foundations of her lifelong health—including her predisposition to obesity and certain chronic diseases—were largely set during this 1,000 day window.

In South Africa, 1 in 4 children under the age of five are experiencing the effects of stunting due to inadequate care during the first 1,000 days of their lives.

That is 27% of the population who will enter the workforce and begin families of their own in the next 20 years or so.Let’s think about that for a moment.A third of the children in our country have affected brain development, are less likely to finish school, have lower earning potential, are more likely to live in poverty as adults and are more likely to suffer from obesity and chronic diseases in adulthood. The potential social and economic impact of stunting on South Africa in the year 2038, is staggering.On the 17th of October 2018, Dr Kopano Matlwa Mabaso inaugurated the Grow Great campaign, which aims to achieve ZERO stunting by 2030. Yes, ZERO. She, and other talented and passionate professionals are dedicating their time, talent and resources to this campaign and urging others to as well.On the 25th of October 2018, the Grow Great team gave an interview to Jane Dutton of eNCA News, bringing light to this crisis and outlining their strategy to

"galvanise South Africa towards a future where no child is unjustly denied the opportunity to reach their full potential."

They are targeting parents, community health workers, the public and policy makers to intervene in the stunting crisis. Childcare in poverty-stricken areas with high rates of child abandonment, is often ceded to institutions who provide foster care until the child is adopted - or too old, and then shunted to the next institution for their age group. While any care is better than none, some early childhood development centres intuitively understood the impact of loving care, with excellent nutrition, exercise and stimulation right from birth, long before the research on the topic emerged. By supporting TLC, you are helping us commit to #GrowGreatness with each baby we care for. Over 900 individual babies, and countless other lives have already been impacted - so we thank you!