Hundreds of mothers and newborn babies in Zambia will have a better chance of life because of the work of a mum of three in Heathmont and the locals she inspired.

 By VANESSA CICCOTELLI

It's Taco Tuesday and Yvonne Lindner's boys are spending their last dregs of energy running around the playground at Heathmont Baptist Church, hungry and impatient to go home after a long day at school and preschool.

It's just a normal day for a mum with three active boys under 10.

On this day, they’re waiting while she talks about the time last August she left them and the country for almost two weeks.

Twelve days – not one of them “normal”.

They don’t make tourist guidebooks for where Yvonne went: Chipembe Clinic in Zambia. She went through World Vision as part of her other role as Children and Young Families Pastor at Heathmont Baptist Church.

The clinic caters for pregnant women from the surrounding rural area.

Expectations on the new mothers are high. Six hours after giving birth, they are expected to walk 15 to 20km back home with their newborn babies. With no doctors, only midwives, the 15-bed clinic does not have enough resources or space for them to be able to stay any longer.

Six days later they have to start walking again, this time back to the clinic, if they want  their baby to be immunised.

“I felt like I’d been hit by a bus after having each of my children,” Yvonne says. “I don’t think I’d have it in me to do that.”

Yvonne quickly learnt not to hold her breath expecting many mothers to return.

This year more than six million children will die before their fifth birthday. Yvonne looks down at Oliver, 5, and Charlie, 3, four little hands tugging at her sides. Hurry up, Mum.

That was it. When Yvonne came home she and Heathmont Baptist Church playgroup co-ordinator Pam Moorhouse and Pastor Steve Roggero, who also went to Zambia, had a fresh vision and an itch to take action.

Yvonne asked the clinic staff how she could help. The staff needed a way to get more mothers to come to the clinic to give birth and then to return six days later to get their babies immunised.

Yvonne asked: “What if we develop an incentives pack?”

“Fabulous,” was the response.

The packs started with baby socks, a singlet, a bar of soap, a face washer and a muslin wrap. A local quilting group said they wanted to knit a baby jumper to include in each pack, each jumper different.

More than 100 mothers from the local church and community have done all the work.

“My main aim was to bring the story back home,” Yvonne says. “Someone would start knitting and someone else would see and say, 'I can do that’. Then her mother would see and start knitting too.”

The goal was 360 packs. The final count is 625. World Vision will ship the packs to Zambia in June, to arrive in August.

The packs are a trial which Yvonne hopes will lead to in-country adoption of the initiative, with all items being sourced in Zambia.

Here’s how Dave puts it: “She pictures a vision, sells it, and everyone else tends to catch that vision from there.”

Next time Yvonne goes to Africa, the locals can expect her to bring something new with her.

“When I returned my eight-year-old said to me, 'Mummy, when you go again I want to come with you’,” she says.

What do they say about apples and trees?