Relief Assistance for Tohoku Earthquake Affected

Enjoying each other's company, mothers are wielding kitchen knives in a cooking room; one of the mothers is carrying a baby in a wide cotton sling and the baby is watching them cooking over his/her mother’s shoulder.

This workshop, hosted by Fukushima Midwife Association, provides mothers an opportunity to learn how to prepare food for infants.

This workshop was aimed at helping mothers by easing their concerns for weaning food and provided mothers with an opportunity to learn how to cook a family meal while strapping their babies to their back. On top of that, they were also able to get answers to the questions they had in everyday life, such as:

what kind of age-appropriate diet mothers should give to their babies;
whether mothers may feed breast milk or formula to their babies as much as their babies want;
whether they worry needlessly about food allergies; and
how to be sure they are feeding their babies a balanced diet.

Choosing Fukushima Midwife Association as an alliance partner, JEN has been assisting the “Midwife-driven Comprehensive Expectant and Nursing Mothers Support Project” since June, 2016. While dealing with calls from mothers after the earthquake, the association realized that so many mothers were worrying about how to raise their babies. Accordingly that led the association to believe that addressing their concerns would help them feel good about themselves and become confident about themselves. Consequently the association has implemented the project in which it teaches mothers how to make weaning diets and cook while rocking their babies on their backs so that they don’t have to leave their crying babies as they are.

Another important thing in addressing mothers’ concerns is to help them to enhance their relationship with local communities.

 Some of the mothers’ replies were:
”My worries and anxieties disappeared thanks to the midwife’s advice;”
”I was able to consult with other mothers.”