Les offers massage sessions in Tokyo in September 2010 to raise public awareness and support for orphans
Dear friends,
I wanted to share with you an opportunity to care for some of the children who are most in need of our help.
There are tens of thousands of children living without their parents in institutions in Japan. These kids ended up in orphanages because their parents were abusive, were unable to care for them, or have died.
Like all children, kids living in orphanages need a generous supply of nurturing attention, including touch, from caring adults for their psychological and physical health. But because most orphanages have relatively few staff compared with the number of children, orphans' need for personalized care is often inadequately met. This situation is particularly detrimental to orphan babies since research has shown that an abundance of loving touch is as essential to babies' health and development as food and sleep.
In response to these challenges, Kizuna Baby is launching a program in Japan to help meet orphans' need for nurturing touch. Kizuna Baby will provide infant massage training to local volunteers and arrange for them to regularly visit and care for babies living in orphanages in the Tokyo area. We will gradually expand this into a nationwide volunteer program. Our first baby massage class and orphanage visit in the Tokyo area will be September 22, 2010. (If you are interested in participating in this program please see its full description. To learn more about the benefits of massage for children please visit the Kizuna Baby website).
Kizuna Baby is also working to bring care to orphans abroad including the millions of children around the world whose parents have died of AIDS. Many of these children were infected with HIV at birth, in infancy, or in some cases when they were raped by relatives. Many of them now have full-blown AIDS.
Cambodia is one of the countries with large numbers of orphans with HIV and AIDS. AIDS orphans in Cambodia are social outcasts and are seldom touched. Not only are their emotional needs for nurturing attention from adults inadequately met, but they also have a special need for the proven benefits of massage which include strengthening of the immune system and relief of pain.
I will travel to Cambodia with a group of volunteers in November 2010 to spend two weeks caring for orphan children with HIV and AIDS. During this visit I will have the opportunity to offer nurturing massage to hundreds of children and provide baby massage education to their caregivers. I will also lay the foundation for future programs in which Kizuna Baby will bring international teams of volunteers including Japanese people to Cambodia and other countries to provide gentle massage to AIDS orphans.
To promote public awareness of orphans' need for our support and to raise funds to help orphans in Japan and Cambodia, I am offering massage sessions for sale in Tokyo in September 2010. All income from these sessions will be split evenly between the volunteer programs I described above which will provide nurturing massage to babies living in orphanages in Japan and to AIDS orphans in Cambodia. By purchasing a massage session with me in September, you will help make it possible for some of the world's most neglected and ill children to receive better care.
All massage sessions I offer in September will be 75 minutes long. They will be held on 9/16 and 9/27 at Salon de Sophia. For both of these dates, available times are 1:15, 2:45, and 4:30pm. The fee for a session is 15000 yen. To request an appointment for a session, please use the contact form.
Although at this time I am not able to publish photos of the children we will visit and massage in the Tokyo orphanage in September, I include below a few photos of the kids we will be visiting in the AIDS orphanage in Cambodia so you can get a little idea of who your contribution will be helping.
If you are interested in receiving information about future opportunities to volunteer to help orphans in Japan and abroad, please join the mailing list at the Kizuna Baby website.
Thank you for your help.
Sincerely,
Les May
