“In giving birth to our babies, we may find that we give birth to new possibilities within ourselves.” — Myla, Jon Kabat-Zinn

I must have been about eight or nine years old. Our family had spent the afternoon visiting a temple, one of those slow, unhurried trips where time feels a little softer than usual. On the way back, my dad was already ahead of us, phone to his ear, his office following him even on a day off. It was just me and my mother, taking our time down the steps.

Then she stopped. Without a word, she reached into her bag and took out the temple offerings she had been carrying some fruit, a little money and walked over to a woman sitting quietly on the side of the stairs. To me, the woman looked like many people we had passed that day. Worn clothes, still eyes, sitting apart from the crowd. But my mother gave her everything she had in her hands. Not a little. Everything. I caught up and asked her why. "She is pregnant," my mother said simply. I looked back. I could not see it. There was no visible belly, no obvious sign. I told my mother as much. "She is not showing yet," she said. "But she is pregnant. And she needed help."

I have thought about that moment many times since. Not because it was dramatic, it wasn't. My mother didn't make a scene. She just saw something, and she acted. What stayed with me was the recognizing. A mother, seeing another mother, before the rest of the world had even caught up to the fact that she was one. For a long time, I told myself it takes a mother to recognize a mother. That there is some instinct shared only between women who have carried life. But I have come to believe something different. It does not take a mother. It takes a person with enough humanity to slow down, to look properly, to notice what is easy to miss when you are busy and comfortable and moving fast through your own life.

That kind of noticing is rarer than it should be and I am glad that NJO Foundation Africa recognized and helped a mother, Sandra.

Two days before Christmas, on the 23rd of December 2025, NJO Foundation Africa met Sandra. She was nine months pregnant and had very little. NJO Foundation Africa sat with her, listened, gave her baby clothes, a soft blanket, and a shawl, small things by most people's measure, but not by hers. She received them the way people receive something they had quietly stopped hoping for.

Today, Sandra is a proud mother. Baby Prosper is two and a half months old. Sandra who once stood bracing herself against an uncertain future now smiles when she talks about her son, Prosper.

Her story is not unique. Across our communities, there are women like Sandra who are pregnant and alone, or who have just given birth and are quietly drowning. NJO Foundation Africa intend to keep noticing them. To keep showing up with clothes, with food, with presence, with the simple message that no mother should face this alone.

Because this is not about charity. It is about what becomes possible when a mother feels held. The child she raises. The person that child grows into. The gentle, grounded human being who will one day hold someone else up in turn. My mother stopped on a temple staircase and gave everything she had in her hands to a woman the rest of the world had not even noticed yet. I did not understand it at the time. I understand it now.

For every Sandra. For every Prosper yet to be born. We will keep showing up.