Two months ago, Nita Kumm’s love for defenceless babies finally came into fruition when she established a special receptacle called Baby Drop Box where abandoned and innocent souls can find caring and loving hands.

In a mind-opening interview with the Kathu Gazette, the founder of the centre said that she suggested the innovative idea using the scriptural readings where the word well or fountain means a lot in the life of a human being.

The word Sediba means a water fountain, well or pool in the seTswana language, which precisely squares up the purpose of the Baby Drop Box because where there is water there is life.

The frequency in the media space about baby-dumping or abandoned children soon after birth and, unfortunately so, in undesignated places like pit toilets or dumping sites, drew an insurmountable empathy and sympathy to the Kumm family and resulted in the establishing of the Baby Drop Box.

How the centre works is that a secret structure has been built in a very strategic site west of Sediba Academy, the former Christian Academy School. The depositor of the baby opens the door of the box with a well-furnished baby cot inside, leaves the baby inside the fluffy linen on the cot to prevent the baby from the cold, writes the name of the baby, date of birth and leaves any message on the form provided (these are optional), important is leaving the baby.

As the Drop Box is opened, an alarm and phone message alert responsible authorities, and the Drop Box owner. The NKS security will concurrently phone the owner that somebody has opened the Drop Box. A five-minute interval is given upon opening the Drop Box so that the person who brings the baby is not found or identified as the process is meant to be in secrecy. When the baby has been dropped in the box, he or she is fetched by the staff for examination by the doctor.

The baby is assigned to loving parents to take care of it until suitable foster parents have been found. Social workers form part of the contingency in the process of getting suitable foster parents to the baby. Also involved is the child protection unit of the police to ensure safety and transparency in the whole process. Ms Kumm said that desperate would-be-mothers must know that her centre has hope for them.

Aborting and abandoning babies is not the way to solving challenges in life, the Baby Drop Box is the answer to young mothers. Asked how difficult it was to get foster parents for such children she said life has a balanced equation that God created, “There is a corresponding number of desperate and willing would-be-parents to take a baby as their own. These are resourced people but God did not give them the blessing to procreation”.

Already positive strides have been shown by individuals to support the initiative by the founder as another couple, Mark and Valerie Doubell having come up with helping hands in the maintenance of the project intended to save innocent souls. Plans are afoot to establish more drop-boxes in the region and neighbouring towns.

The drop-box, according to Nita, is more like a pregnant woman waiting for the baby to be born. Secondly the mother won’t be persecuted even if she has been identified, as the whole scope is to save the life of the baby. Importantly if the mother needs counselling before taking the decision to surrender the baby she can phone and ask for counselling. For further information call 0832573875