Serving Mothers and Children in a New Setting

Our faith calls us to care for the world’s most vulnerable women and children. Through our Children and Mothers Partnerships (CHAMPS) program, CMMB brings quality healthcare to underserved communities in Haiti, Kenya, Peru, South Sudan, and Zambia.

Our CHAMPS framework helps provide care and support at home and at local health facilities. We work with each community to shape solutions based on their distinct needs. In Haiti and South Sudan, CHAMPS and other projects address widespread poverty and malnutrition by supporting families to raise goats as a source of income and manage gardens to improve household diets. In Peru, we combat widespread anemia through nutrition support for pregnant women and children. In every CHAMPS program, CMMB-supported community health workers encourage regular health facility visits for prenatal care and in-facility births, helping to reduce high neonatal and maternal mortality rates.

Until now, CHAMPS has focused on hard-to-reach, rural areas. But mothers and children struggle to access basic healthcare in cities, too. In response, we started our first urban CHAMPS in a country we know well—Zambia.

In 2014, the first CHAMPS program in Zambia began in Western Province’s remote Mwandi District. Our new CHAMPS program is in Kanyama, a densely populated informal settlement of 180,000 in Zambia’s capital, Lusaka. Here, poverty and environmental challenges drive poor health.

Mom Memory practicing kangaroo mother care.

CHAMPS Kanyama is igniting change with programs to promote healthier communities by advocating for health facility deliveries, better sanitation, childhood immunization, and nutritious diets. We trained healthcare workers at Kanyama Referral Hospital on lifesaving techniques like kangaroo mother care, which uses skin-to-skin contact to help newborns regulate their temperature and gain weight.

For a young mother named Memory, this practice saved a life. Her son, Daniel, was premature and weighed less than three pounds. Hospital staff encouraged Memory to snuggle Daniel against her skin. With consistent kangaroo mother care, his weight soon doubled, and a healthy mother and child went home. There, CMMB-supported community health workers continue to monitor Daniel’s progress as he grows stronger.

CMMB supported kangaroo mother care for health workers at Kanyama Referral Hospital. Baby Daniel is among the fragile newborns to benefit from the practice.

This is the impact your generosity makes possible. Together, we are reducing preventable deaths and inspiring hope in communities—wherever the need takes us.

2025 Global Results

• 851,037 people with better access to healthcare services and other support through CHAMPS
• 32,353 pregnant women attended their first prenatal care session
• 98% of women gave birth with the support of a skilled health worker