Emily Stillman Foundation Joins Mother’s Day Fun Run

Mother’s Day Fun Run is an annual corporate social responsibility project organised by the Nation Publications Limited (NPL), in support of safe motherhood by taking care of the wellbeing of expectant mothers and their unborn children, through provision of maternal and neonatal healthcare equipment and supplies to needy, poorly funded and under-resourced public hospitals and health centres.

The 2016 edition Mother’s Day Fun Run, scheduled for October 8th in Mzimba, will be the twelfth of these series, which have been targeting a hospital (and neighbouring health centres) which have recorded the highest maternal mortality deaths in Malawi in a given year.

According to Mwnation   The Emily Stillman Foundation of the United States of America (USA) on Tuesday donated two bicycle ambulances towards Nation Publications Limited (NPL) Mothers Day Fun Run scheduled for October 8 2016 in Mzimba.

In an interview on the sidelines of the donation, the foundation’s co-founder and director Alicia Stillman said the donation is part of fulfilling the organisation’s objective of saving lives.

"We feel honoured to be a part of this initiative and we are proud that this donation will help to reach out and save those mothers and babies who are in dire need of such kind of donation at the moment,” she said.

Michael Stillman, co-founder of the organisation, added: “We thought it was a worthwhile thing to do and it comes to our core to do more because we have seen people who are suffering, hungry and cannot get better medical care.”

In his remarks, NPL deputy chief executive officer Alfred Ntonga thanked Emily Stillman Foundation for the donation, saying it has come as a surprise.

He said: “We are humbled that these people have travelled all the way [from the USA] and have heard about this initiative and decided to come and make this donation. We never expected that our cause is going to get that kind of support from as far as the United States.

"We hope that people who are going to be given these ambulances are going to take good care of them and use them for the intended purpose, which is primarily to save the life of the mother and child."

He said the ambulances can be driven by anyone and do not require fuel, but are more convenient than carrying a person on a stretcher.

"We really believe that such kind of a donation is going make a huge difference,” said Ntonga.

Mother’s Day Fun Run, which has been taking place since 2005, is a corporate social responsibility project of NPL dedicated to the cause of safe motherhood.

The project positively impacts the well-being of expectant mothers and their unborn children through provision of maternal and neonatal healthcare equipment and supplies to government hospitals and health centres. The Emily Stillman Foundation, a charity set up with the core aim of saving lives through organ donation, was formed in 2014 following the death of the family’s daughter Emily Nicole who succumbed to meningococcal disease aged 19 and died 36 hours later.