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I felt this for the first time far from my homeland
Babies don't have nations The way they hold their heads is the same
They gaze with the same curiosity in their eyes When they cry, the tone of their voices is the same
Babies are the flower of all humanity They are all roses, all buds
Some of them are a blond piece of light While others are pitch-dark grapes
Let us leave them to grow up with passion May they sprout and burgeon like saplings
They are not yours, nor mine, nor anybody's They belong to the whole world They are the most precious beings of humankind
Like the poet Ataol Behramoglu, industrial designer Cansu Akarsu felt that
babies do not have nations when she was far away from her native country.
She said babies do not have nations and went to a remote village in Uganda to design a baby carrier.
- I was already working on design projects for the developing countries since I was in university.
With the help of these works, I applied to a competition in Denmark.
At that time, Robert Frost, chair of an American foundation, was looking for a designer to design
a baby carrier to be used in developing countries which
would also motivate fathers to carry their babies.
He found me through my network in Denmark.
Then, I built up a team.
My designer friend Kubra Saygin came along with me.
We went to Uganda for a field study.
We made a research to find out what people need, what problems they face with the traditional
baby carrying methods and what local solutions we could find to develop these problems.
Cansu Akarsu and her team came back to Istanbul after a 3 month-long research and development process in Uganda.
They designed an affordable and easy-to-use baby carrier for parents in Uganda
with the help of mother and child health specialists in Turkey.
Their aim is not to sell this; instead they planned to teach local tailors in Uganda how to make this
carrier and help them produce it and sell it at affordable prices.
- When we went to Uganda, we realized that there are local tailors
who can make these carriers easily.
Our project was supported by the foundation and it developed as a social project.
We trained these tailors so that they could produce "Happy Baby"
themselves and encouraged them to sell it to their neighbors.
Tailors are now producing the carriers in 12 villages in a small town called Nukokonjeru in Uganda.
We started with 17 tailors.
We encouraged the tailors to sell the Happy Baby carriers for 7 dollars in a way that it can be paid by parents.
The project has continued spreading in Nukokonjeru after we left.
20 more tailors were trained.
As a result of "Happy Baby" project with the collaboration of Real Medicine Foundation
and Children in Africa Breastfeeding Support,
Cansu Akarsu and her team founded "Happy Baby Association"
in Denmark and strive to expand the project in other countries.
Cansu Akarsu designed carriers in order to decrease the injuries of mothers
and children caused by wrong carrying methods.
With the help of her project, fathers who think carrying
their baby is feminine duty also became involved in the project.
She made a difference which started from Africa and will spread to the rest of the world by saying
"Babies don't have nations, they belong the whole earth, they are the most precious beings of humankind".