Helping new moms spurs on Mrs SA entrant

DESPITE what many movies and television shows portray, not all pageants are for false eyelash-wearing toddlers or beautiful yet ditzy twentysomethings.

Non-profit founder and mother of three Christy Haefele will represent Cape Town in the Schwarzkopf Professional Mrs South Africa Pageant.

Haefele founded Beating Heart SA last September.

The organisation has distributed 761 bags with new mom essentials to Elsies River and Kraaifontein Day and Community hospitals.

Each R100 drawstring bag contains wet wipes, maternity pads, a toothbrush and toothpaste, a bar of soap, surgical spirits, cotton wool and 12 nappies.

“Our goal is to narrow the equality gap and for every new mom in South Africa’s government hospitals to receive a Beating Heart SA care bag with practical and essential gifts to show love and encouragement to them in the first few emotional and hormonal moments after childbirth,” Haefele said.

She created the organisation because she believes a baby cannot have the right start without the mother also being empowered.

“It’s really unfair that I can have three babies in a private hospital with the support of a loving husband and family in town and also have nine months to prepare all the little things I want for the baby, while the majority of South African women don’t have that opportunity,” she said.

Her goal is to roll out the programme to government hospitals across the country.

The Mrs South Africa Pageant is a women’s empowerment programme rather than a beauty pageant in the traditional sense. Married professional women between the ages of 25 and 50 may enter.

Haefele considers the pageant a “truly life-changing journey”. – Tara Longardner