When expectant mom Lorrel Singh was announced as the Pampers Premium Care Baby On Board winner on 4 September, she was overcome with emotion as she knew how much this prize would help her in her own pregnancy journey. Now to spread the love, she is helping other pregnant moms in need in her community through her โPay it Forwardโ campaign. She spoke to Tennille Aron about this new initiative.
The pandemic has been a trying time for everyone, especially pregnant moms who have not only had to endure the regular demands of a pregnancy, but who have had to go through a pregnancy during one of the most stressful periods in history.
However, instead of letting it get her down, Pampers Premium Care Baby on Board winner Lorrel Singh is determined to use this time as a perfect opportunity to start helping less fortunate members of her community through the Pay it Forward campaign, which she launched earlier this year.
American activist Martin Luther King Jr once said, โLifeโs most persistent and urgent question is, What are you doing for others?โ Lorrelโs answer to this question was: as much as possible for those less fortunate than her.
Ever since she was young, Lorrelโs greatest passion has been to find ways to give back to her community and uplift those around her. In January 2020, this passion led to her starting the โLovers of Humanity | A Philanthropic Journeyโmovement with her husband. This movement was established as a way to raise awareness on important socio-economic problems, as well as to help impart information on certain life skills to those in her community. It was also created as a way to support disadvantaged communities through education, motivational talks and mentoring.
After launching this initiative, Lorrel and her husband began their first campaign, which focused on collecting and donating general hygiene-related items, including sanitary towels, to three initiatives. Through this campaign, the movement managed to collect over 600 packs of sanitary towels, deodorants, sanitary wipes and drawstring bags to donate.
Unfortunately, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the campaign had to be stopped a lot earlier than expected. Despite this, however, the group was still able to donate all the items that they collected to their chosen initiatives.
While the pandemic put a hold on the other projects that the movement had planned for the year, Lorrel did receive some amazing news during this time. On the 14 March, just a day before the president announced the national state of disaster, Lorrel and her husband found out that she was pregnant with baby number two, after 11 years.
Going through a pregnancy in the midst of a pandemic is no easy task, as Lorrel soon discovered. โDid we plan to be pregnant during a pandemic? Of course not. What was to follow in the weeks and months to come was strange to us, confusing and scary at the same time,โ she says.
Attending doctorsโ appointments and scans alone, and constantly worrying about the safety of her unborn child made the pregnancy that much more stressful. This is why when she won more than R85ย 000 worth of prizes and a six-month supply of Pampers nappies in the Baby on Board competition on 4 September, she decided to start finding ways to pay it forward and help other expectant parents on their own pregnancy journeys.
โWhen I was announced as the winner of the Pampers Premium Care Baby on Board competition, I said to my husband that we are so blessed, and now itโs time for us to give back,โ says Lorrel.
The Pay it Forward campaign, under the Lovers of Humanity movement, was born out of a desire to help pregnant moms and dads who were in need of extra help. People were asked to email through stories of expectant moms who needed help buying items for their upcoming births and a wishlist of the items that they needed. Lorrel and her husband then went through the emails and started putting together the items on the different wishlists.
โThe emails started to pour in and we spoilt every single mom that wrote in. We asked each of them to send us a wish list and we tried our best to fulfil that list. For every letter we received, each mom received a box of goodies for her baby,โ says Lorrel.
The project was funded entirely by Lorrel and her husband, and once the lockdown dropped to Alert Level 1, Lorrel and her husband even surprised some of the moms in person (ensuring at all times that all COVID-19 safety protocols were strictly adhered to). โThis was a fantastic experience for us as a family. Our second bundle of joy arrives in the middle of November, and this was our way of giving thanks for our blessing,โ explains Lorrel.
โLife is not only about receiving, itโs also about giving. A small act of kindness could be the miracle that someone else is waiting for,โ says Lorrel. And she intends to give as much as she can, while she still can and before her second baby arrives.
Apart from this initiative, Lorrel still has plenty of other projects planned for her movement. If you would like to get involved in Lorrelโs movement by donating or simply follow her campaigns, you can follow her on social media:
Instagram: @loversofhumanitysa
Facebook: @Lovers of Humanity | A Philanthropic Journey
You can also send her an email on [email protected]
