News & Events

Although when translated literally, Casa de Espera means “waiting house,” for many pregnant women of Amazon jungle communities the phrase takes on far larger meaning.

Many times between life and death.

“House of hope,” an alternate translation, is perhaps the more appropriate of the two, noted Linda Pfeiffer, president and chief executive officer of INMED Partnerships for Children.

Too many expectant mothers have little to no access to health care. Where health care facilities do exist in the rugged country, they are often too far for women whose only mode of transportation is a boat with a small portable 2-cycle engine on the river, sometimes taking up to 12 hours to reach the closest health care facility.

As part of its Healthy Babies program in Peru, INMED has been working with local municipalities and health ministries to build maternity waiting houses near health facilities throughout the country’s Ucayali Region.

The maternity waiting houses will allow expectant mothers and their families to reside there in the last stages of their pregnancies or during a high-risk pregnancy to ensure they are close to obstetrical care. Residents will also be encouraged to attend education sessions on basic infant care and nutrition.

--Released October 19, 2009 Read more...

INMED Partnerships for Children is expanding its partnership with the GE Foundation and launching a partnership with GE South Africa to help to bring nutritious lunches to children in need in by bringing a mobile kitchen and training to one particularly needy school.

And in the nick of time, too, for this South African school is getting ready with its first harvests from a newly established garden planted with the help of GE volunteers.

The garden was established earlier this year to serve both as a source of nutritional foods for the school’s 1,600 students and as a living classroom for students to learn about nutrition.

Although students, most of them poor, of the Bonwelong Primary School in the Ivory Park community of Johannesburg are entitled to receive a daily meal through the government school feeding program, menus do not often follow standardized guidelines for nutritional content or portion sizes.

It doesn’t help that the school lacks a sufficient kitchen to prepare and store foods for its students, relying on a nearby church kitchen and a single stove. The new kitchen, slated to open by mid-October, will include a double sink, working and storage surfaces, a hot water tap, a three-burner gas stove, refrigerator, electric plugs and mounted drying racks.

--Released October 19, 2009 Read more...

INMED Partnerships for Children’s Healthy Futures South Africa program is expanding for the second time in less than a month, thanks to a new corporate funding partner, Tiger Brands.

With a $63,000 grant from Tiger Brands (equivalent to 500,000 rand in South African currency), the Healthy Futures program will expand into the Limpopo Province at the northernmost point of South Africa, an area that INMED South Africa Program Director Ethel Zulu describes as economically depressed, with a high rate of malnutrition and poor school attendance.

“Among the children who do attend school, many arrive hungry, and for most, their only significant meal of the day is the food they receive through the school lunch program,” she added. “Healthy foods are not only important for their nutrition, but also an incentive for them to be in school.”

Often, Zulu said, school lunches lack the nutritional value students need, and though there is an agricultural base in the area, many of the local subsistence farmers lack farming and business training to sustain food security and economic development.

The four schools selected for the program are: Napo Primary near Mediba Village; Malopang Primary near Jupiter Village; Rantsho Primary near Diana Village, and Matuma Combined near Bellingsgate Village. The schools were selected by King Mashashane of the tribal group of the same name in the Limpopo Province, based on those with the most need as part of his determination to improve resources to adequately feed the children.

--Released October 19, 2009 Read more...

When Coralis Fernandez discovered that what brought her the greatest satisfaction was helping families overcome their struggles, it didn’t take long for her to change careers.

She used to be an attorney in Venezuela practicing family law and then a manager for real estate firms, first in Florida for over a decade and then in Virginia where she moved with her husband about two years ago.

But something was missing.

She usually filled this void by volunteering at her churches in Florida and Virginia, working with low-income families to help them overcome their struggles any way she could. Sometimes, simply talking and listening to them was enough, but on other occasions she could do more, like connecting families to specific services that they needed.

Witnessing, and in some cases sharing, the experience of overcoming tremendous challenges with families, presented an overriding joy in her life.

--Released October 19, 2009 Read more...

Franklin Jr.’s mother watched with one eye on him and another on her guests as the two year old, his long, curly black hair crowning a joyful and spirited smile, sprinted back and forth between his ball and SpongeBob on TV.

Sitting on the couch in her Lynwood apartment, Bianca is at the ready for her son to run into her arms to periodically hide from the strangers. She gives him a kiss on the head, asks him to go watch more of SpongeBob, and without skipping a beat resumes talking about her experience of being a teenage mom.

Today, things are much different for Bianca than they were two years ago when, at the age of 16, she fought with others, became pregnant and dropped out of high school. Ultimately, she returned and graduated from high school, and the simple fact that she is now surrounded by college applications and health care insurance forms sheds more than hints to just how far she has come in those two years.

“I want to have a good life and give him everything he needs,” Bianca says, glancing over at the toddler. She then admits that few of her recent accomplishments, such as getting her driver’s license after three attempts or being placed on the waiting list at an area college, would have been possible without the help of her mom or other people such as Emily Flores, a case manager with INMED Partnerships for Children in Los Angeles.

--Released October 19, 2009 Read more...

Congress, kids do like their vegetables.

As congressional members consider the Child Nutrition and WIC Reauthorization Act this year, they might want to hear what some 50 grade- and middle-school students in south Los Angeles County told INMED Partnerships for Children.

They want more healthy foods.

The students were part of focus groups at schools in the Compton Unified School District. The focus groups were organized by INMED’s Food for Thought program, designed to bring parents and the district together to address obesity among children and ensure access to healthy foods for their students.

“What we learned from the students,” said Joey Shanahan, the Food for Thought program manager, “is that they want to see fresh and delicious fruits and vegetables in their schools. Students want to be healthy.” The program is funded by a two-year, $400,000 grant from The California Endowment.

--Released July 16, 2009 Read more...

Parasitic worms have been a part of life for millions of children in developing and emerging nations worldwide. So too have been the resulting lethargy, inattention and poor performance in school that they have suffered through.

But all that – and more – is changing.

With medicines donated to INMED Partnerships for Children over more than 20 years, more than 5 million children in 15 countries have been freed from infection with multiple types of intestinal worms.

One of the current focus areas for INMED’s deworming program is Brazil, where in some locations more than four out of five children have tested positive for worms. Yet with medicine donated to INMED from Johnson & Johnson and its affiliate, Janssen-Cilag, children can expel the majority of these worms within days. From there, other dramatic differences soon unfold.

--Released July 16, 2009 Read more...

Although preparing to turn over its nutrition program to nearly a dozen schools in this impoverished township just outside of Johannesburg, where malnutrition plagues thousands of children, INMED’s work here is far from done.

In fact, for some schools, thanks to a renewed commitment from the Monsanto Fund, which will extend its support of INMED’s programs in South Africa over five years, the work is just beginning.

Since 2006, INMED Partnerships for Children has worked with 11 schools to reduce hunger among 10,600 children by increasing the availability of nutritious produce through school gardens and delivering nutrition education for teachers, school food workers and families of school-age children. Funding for this first phase of the program was $600,000.

--Released July 13, 2009 Read more...

They are, in many cases invisible to the greater community. And therein lays the problem when talking about the homeless in Loudoun County, one of the richest communities in the nation, says Maria Elena Vasquez-Alvarez, director of Loudoun Programs with INMED Partnerships for Children.

--Released June 15, 2009 Read more...

INMED Partnerships for Children has joined with other organizations by signing onto an open letter through the Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network to call upon President Barack Obama and Congress to modernize an outdated system in support of U.S. global development efforts, which in the end impacts not only the well being of those facing tremendous odds because of poverty, disease and lack of education but also U.S. interests in national security, the economy, and global stability. INMED also encourages the public and its friends to show their support by signing onto the letter by visiting:  http://www.modernizingforeignassistance.net/network/open_letter_to_obama.php.  

--Released March 18, 2009 Read more...

The Freddie Mac Foundation has once again renewed its ongoing support of the INMED MotherNet/Healthy Families Loudoun program in Loudoun County, Va. with a $100,000 grant.

--Released February 11, 2009 Read more...

INMED Partnerships for Children has joined the US Coalition for Child Survival in calling upon the U.S. government to renew its commitment to reduce the number of children under 5 dying each year from preventable and treatable causes, INMED President and CEO Linda Pfeiffer announced today.

--Released February 11, 2009 Read more...

Thanks to a new funding stream, the Healthy Children, Healthy Futures program in Brazil, already serving about 90,000 children in 400 schools, will expand into 12 new economically depressed towns in March, according to INMED Brazil Executive Director Joyce Capelli.

--Released February 5, 2009 Read more...

More than 10,000 school children in South Africa’s Orange Farm settlement on the outskirts of Johannesburg have something they never had before – fresh produce for lunch from gardens at their own schools.

And the community, from government agencies to individual families, has a new outlook on the importance of maintaining healthy diets.

--Released January 27, 2009 Read more...