You Don`t Get Choose Where You Are Born
We started Thankyou because we live in a world where 1 billion people live in extreme poverty. At the same time we’re spending billions of dollars on every day products. Our idea is to empower people to choose a better product that gives 100 per cent of profits to ending extreme poverty. We’ve had to make huge sacrifices to make it happen. For three years, we volunteered our time and worked two jobs to fund the dream.
We skipped a lot of the ‘normal’ young people stuff. The sacrifices in the early years and even now are tough, but to have grown from bottled water to now over 50 products across water, food, body care and baby and have given over $4.1 million to change the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, makes every sacrifice worth it.
As we launched the Thankyou baby range in July 2016, I don’t think I’ve ever been as excited in my life. It’s not just the ‘hype’ of another product launch. Something happened on the 6th of July 2015, that changed everything for me. I became a parent.
People said it would change my life. I never got that. Until 1:30pm on the 6th of July when our little guy Jedediah was born. My heart was racing that day. I was nervous. I was watching my wife and best friend, Justine, go through something that I couldn’t control and all I could do was say that “it’s going to be ok”.
There was one moment where a button was pressed and in came multiple doctors, machines and while everyone was calm, I was freaking out. Things got a little complicated in that room and we are so grateful to have had trained people with us. Without them, I wouldn’t have a son and I may have also lost my best friend in the process.
11 months later, I was standing on the side of a mountain in a remote village in Nepal and my heart was racing. A lady inside a birthing centre was giving birth. Justine was invited into the room to support her and the doctor that was traveling with us (who was the country director of the child and maternal health programs we’re funding) had stepped in to help deliver. Why? Because things were getting complicated.
“It’s a boy,” one of the team yelled! Justine emerged from the room and I ran up and hugged her. She couldn’t speak for a few moments. When she did, she said it was beautiful, but there was a moment where they thought they’d lost the baby.
The mother had a frontal-posterior and was at risk of her uterus erupting, and if that wasn’t complicated enough, the baby was born with the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck. But the mother and baby made it, thanks to the birthing centre facilities and team at One Heart Worldwide.
Dr Nastu, who delivered the baby came out and told us that without the birthing centre the mother would have delivered at home or in the mountains walking over 5 hours to the nearest hospital, and both the mother and baby would have died.
Thankyou baby saw the launch of a product range that I’m so personally connected to. Nappies and baby body care products that commit 100% of the profit to funding child and maternal health programs; currently one mum dies every 90 seconds in pregnancy and childbirth and globally 2.9 million babies don’t make it to their first month of life.
You don’t get to choose where you are born – in a hospital in Australia or a remote village in Nepal - but you do deserve the same chance at life. Our world’s been gifted two more little champion boys (one of them, my son) and two amazing women (one of them, my wife) because there was trained support at both births. - Daniel
