Gabriel’s Pillow Project – Children helping Children!

Simon's Town Museum

Gabriel's Pillow Project - Children helping Children!

Gabriel Jansen is 9 years old. He attends Sun Valley Primary School and is in Grade 4.

At the Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital there is a home care programme for children with tracheostomies and ventilation. A very comfortable pillow called a ‘Squeezy Love Pillow’ is soft and able to mould to the child’s body, we like to use them to position the children when working with the tracheostomy.

Gabriel and his family have been a great support to the hospital and visited on many occasions to help support mothers whose children have a tracheostomy for Pierre Robin Sequence. One day while visiting the hospital Gabriel saw and heard about the pillow. This made him decide to start a project to raise the funds to buy a pillow for each child. Simon’s Town Museum is a community museum, that is supporting Gabriel, by raising awareness in communities. There will be a function at Red Cross Hospital to celebrate the project on Youth Day the 16th June 2009. The Friends of the Children’s Hospital Association is a non-profit organisation registered with the Department of Social Development and has been a support organisation to the Red Cross Children’s Hospital since 1978. The Friends of the Children’s Hospital Association, through the BreathEasy Fund supply the equipment for home care and will administer the fund to buy the Squeezy Love Pillows for the children.
Please support Gabriel and donate towards his Pillow Project.

Gabriel’s Pillow Project – Children helping Children!

Friends of the Children’s Hospital Association – reference BreathEasy Fund/GPP
Contact Nazrina Teladia 082 788 8991 / Cathy Salter-Jansen 021 786 3046

Banking Details: Standard Bank, Rondebosch, Branch Code 025009.
Current Account number 071439196

Gabriel was born with Pierre Robin Sequence.
This caused him to have trouble breathing, so to save his life, he needed a tracheostomy when he was just 13 days old. A tracheostomy is a small tube leading from the skin on the neck into the wind pipe to bypass an obstruction in the upper airway, to allow for breathing.

Gabriel had 2 operations to repair his cleft palate and when he was 16 months old, his tracheostomy was removed and he was able to get on with his life as a “normal” boy.

Pierre Robin Sequence is characterized by a combination of three features, possibly due
to the underdevelopment of the lower jaw.

He decided to call it Gabriel’s Pillow Project

Squeezy Love Pillows cost R85 each.

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