A Year of Giving and Receiving at Life for African Mothers
- Bogdan Shuliak
- Dec 29, 2025
- 4 min read
The Twelve Gifts of 2025.
Dear Friend,
As we celebrate our 20th anniversary, we invite you to journey through 2025 with us—a year filled with extraordinary acts of kindness that crossed oceans and transformed lives. Each gift we received from you became a gift we could give to African mothers.
For two decades, Life for African Mothers has stood for one unwavering truth: no mother should die giving life. We work across Sub-Saharan Africa to prevent postpartum haemorrhage—the leading killer of mothers—through life-saving medication, midwifery training, and essential supplies.
We've captured this beautiful cycle of giving as twelve precious gifts—a gallery of moments imagined as art objects on silver plates. Each unusual image is our reflection on the art of giving, and you are the artist who made it all possible.
The Gift of Music
When the Cowbridge Male Voice Choir, The Yale Concert Band, the Llantrisant Male Voice Choir, and the talented Welsh singer Hannah Grace filled Cardiff's Temple of Peace with music for a cause, they were performing for your hearts. Across two unforgettable evenings in February and May, we raised £2,691—delivering on a promise to African mothers that help was coming.
The Gift of Stories
From NGO Week in Freetown to midwife gatherings at Glangwili Hospital, from radio interviews to the National Health Summit, our team became storytellers for those whose voices often go unheard, raising vital awareness about postpartum haemorrhage and inspiring others to join the cause.
The Gift of Voice
When Reverend Canon Mpho Tutu van Furth joined us as Patron, she brought a lifetime of championing women's dignity and rights. Daughter of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, ordained priest, and global advocate, Mpho's journey mirrors our own. Her connection to Angela began in 2012 at a human rights conference in South Africa, and that spark of shared purpose has now become a powerful alliance in our fight for every mother's right to survive childbirth.
The Gift of Hearts
British hearts opened in the most profound ways this year, turning personal pain into hope across the ocean.
Hannah survived postpartum haemorrhage in the UK thanks to expert care—eight hours in theatre, multiple transfusions. Then she raised £2,730 so African mothers could have the same chance at survival. Another supporter, facing their grandmother's end-of-life care and remembering that she lost a baby who was born with spina bifida in 1970s Birmingham, donated £100 with these words: "I can't go back... but if I can help any other mothers, then I am happy to do it."
These weren't just donations—they were love letters to mothers they'll never meet, bridges built between grief and hope, between one generation's loss and another's survival.
The Gift of Partnership
True partnership transforms possibility into reality. The Oxford Health Company donated 1.5 million prenatal vitamins and crucial funding for misoprostol and midwife training. Waste2Wonder sent an entire container of furniture and clinical equipment to hospitals and schools in Sierra Leone, creating better spaces for healing and learning. Together, these partnerships remind us that when businesses lead with purpose, their impact echoes across continents.
The Gift of Care
For mothers giving birth far from hospitals, our new maternity boxes became lifelines in small packages. Each box—containing umbilical cord clamps, gloves, catheters, and newborn essentials—can prevent deadly complications during home births. Our first 100 boxes are now in Sierra Leone, distributed by midwives to women in the most remote communities. It's a small beginning with enormous potential, extending our reach to mothers we couldn't help before.
The Gift of Knowledge
When four James Paget Hospital midwives and LFAM's trustee Peter spent a week in Makeni and Freetown this November as our volunteers, they trained 50 local midwives and created six champion trainers who will multiply their impact for years to come. We couldn't have been more proud of Nicola, Lottie, Lisa, Nicky, and Peter, who gave their all to travel across the ocean and help us train local midwives.
And when the WHO changed its PPH intervention threshold from 500mL to 300mL of blood loss—a game-changing policy based on research involving 312,000 women—we celebrated as more vulnerable lives would be saved with the research and practice.
The Gift of Life
This year, we delivered 200,000 misoprostol tablets, alongside more than £5,000 worth of hospital and training equipment, to continue our fight against PPH in Sub-Saharan Africa. This means thousands of mothers will hold their babies instead of becoming another tragic number.
The Gift of Births
Real mothers experienced safer deliveries and held healthier babies in their arms—moments of joy made possible by every effort that came before.
The Gift of Recognition
When Country Representative Morlai Kamara accepted the Sierra Leone Humanitarian Service Awards on behalf of our team, it wasn't just a trophy—it was recognition of every clinic visit, every medicine delivered, every precious life saved. This award celebrates the extraordinary people working where maternal healthcare matters most, those who show up every day to ensure no mother dies needlessly.
The Gift of Legacy
Twenty years ago, our then-to-be CEO Angela watched BBC Panorama and couldn't look away. Dr Grace Kodindo in Chad: "We lost a woman on Saturday. A woman on Sunday. Two women today." That single moment of refusing to accept that 800 women died daily from preventable causes sparked everything that followed.
From a £5,000 shipment to 6 million tablets delivered. From one hospital to multiple countries. From a handful of volunteers to 1,000+ midwives trained. One million potential lives saved. Dr Grace is now our Patron. Angela received an MBE.
But this isn't just their story—it's yours. Every volunteer, every donor, every share turns hope into miracle.
The Gift of Compassion
This year, compassion arrived in many forms: a transformational £46,000 grant from Guernsey Overseas Aid; ongoing support from The Oxford Health Company; and countless individual donations from across the UK. Each contribution, whether £10 or £10,000, carried the same message: you matter, your baby matters, your life matters. This is compassion made tangible, love made practical, humanity at its finest.
As we step into 2026, we carry these twelve gifts forward—not as memories, but as momentum. Every song sung, every story shared, every partnership forged, every mother saved reminds us why we do this work.
Thank you for being the heart of Life for African Mothers. Thank you for believing that every mother deserves to survive childbirth. Thank you for giving gifts that become lives.
With deepest gratitude and warmest wishes for the season,
The Life for African Mothers Team
To continue giving the gift of life in 2026, please visit
