Thank you to all who took part in our Help for Haiti Month. Mark is still tallying up the votes but a percentage of each treatment will be given to three great charities.

Doctors without Borders
Care
Friends of the Orphans

A special shout out goes to our YinOva patient Amelia. Amelia, who is 13, has been our patient since she was 5 years old. She heard about our Help for Haiti Month and emailed me and ask if she could join in by holding a bake sale in our office. So last Monday evening she stayed up untill 3am baking an enormous amount of cookies, muffins and cakes. On Tuesday she arrived with her Mom, Joanna, and set out her stall in our waiting room. Many of you met her and bought her cakes, which were delicious. She tended to her stall from 9am until 9pm which was an amazing achievement, especially for someone who had been up so late the night before.

Many of you emailed me to tell me how inspired you were by Amelia’s efforts and on behalf of the whole YinOva community, I’d like to express our appreciation for her hard work and enthusiasm. Way to go, Amelia!

Amelia raised $250 dollars and decided to give the money to Habitat for Humanity a charity that she had researched on the internet and she chose because they had been working in Haiti for over 20 years and so, she felt, they would have the infrastructure in place to be of real benefit to people who were rendered homeless by the earthquake.

One of the many things I love about the YinOva Center is our sense of community. I am thrilled that Amelia felt so at home here that she chose us to host her bake sale and so grateful that you all  supported her, enthusiastically, by buying her cakes and cookies. Thank you.

We love Kiva!

Praised by Oprah and endorsed by President Clinton in his book “Giving”, Kiva aims to encourage micro-financing by matching ordinary people, willing to provide small loans, with entrepreneurs in developing countries who will use the money to build a business and climb out of poverty. The loans, which can be as small as $25, are usually paid back over 12 months allowing the investor to reinvest their money in someone else’s venture. 96% of borrowers fully repay what they owe, a statistic that represents how seriously these loans are taken.

At The YinOva Center we like to support women who are starting small businesses. We have enormous fun choosing who to lend to. We like logging on to the Kiva website and reading people’s stories. It’s inspiring to hear how people plan to expand their businesses in order to support their families. Why not try it? It’s like internet shopping but with more heart. For as little as $25 you could support a woman in Nepal who is trying to expand her sandal shop or a woman in the Philippines who is making and selling crispy snacks. Seamstresses, farmers, bread makers and shop keepers around the world from Africa to Azerbaijan – the choice is yours. As women who run a business it makes us proud to lend money to entrepreneurial women and play a small role in helping them to help themselves and their families. You don’t earn interest on a Kiva loan but you do get the satisfaction of knowing that you have made a difference.

So far Kiva has attracted nearly 250,000 lenders and disbursed $22 million across 40 countries. You can withdraw your money when your loan has been repaid but almost everyone keeps on lending. That way Kiva keeps on growing and the charity expects to have distributed $100 million worth of loans by 2010.

If you decide to be a Kiva member we’d love you to join our YinOva Kiva Team. We focus on providing small loans to women. So start lending and spread some love. If you’re anything like me, you’ll find it a bit addictive.

A very merry Christmas to you and yours from all of us.

I am with my family in upstate New York. It’s early on Christmas morning and everyone else is asleep. I am puttering around the house wrapping presents and preparing vegetables. The turkey is brining outside in a big bin. We brine our turkey according to a recipe in Nigella Lawson’s book Feast: Food to Celebrate Life. After trying out many different recipes over the years our family have settled on this one. The brine has orange, cinnamon, maple syrup, caraway seeds, allspice, ginger, salt, sugar, honey, cloves and star anise in it. The turkey looks and smells festive even before we start cooking.

I like my Christmases to be traditional and usually balk at attempts to change things. My late Mum loved Christmas and I reconnect to her and to my Gran by doing things the way they’ve always been done. So I’ll be making my Gran’s pork and apple stuffing and serving my Mum’s plum pudding. I’ll be singing along to Christmas carols whilst I make the gravy. There will be Christmas crackers (I think you call them poppers) and I’ll insist my family wear the silly hats inside them. I always get a little bit homesick at this time of year but all in all it will be a very English Christmas here in snowy upstate New York.

Happy Christmas to those of you who celebrate, happy 5th night of Chanukah to others of you (including my husband) and for everyone else whatever you wish yourself, consider yourself wished.

Love,
Jill

Illustration
— Pkruger | Dreamstime.com

We wish all our Jewish patients and staff a very Happy Chanukah.

These healthy Chanukah recipes from the Dallas News caught my eye. They look great although to be honest in our house my husband insists on making potato latkes the old fashioned way. He may have a point. Although grilled latkes sound very healthy, frying potato pancakes in oil symbolizes the miracle of one day’s oil lasting for eight days and so is an important part of the ritual.

May the eight days of Chanukah bring happiness and love to you and yours.

Photograph
© Woo Bing Siew | Dreamstime.com

Happy Thanksgiving to you all.

I have much to be thankful for. When I think about The YinOva Center, what I am most grateful for is the sense of community that we have been able to create. All of us – practitioners, administrators and patients feel connected. I love the fact that I can walk into the waiting room and see you chatting, sharing your experiences and supporting each other. You are a great group of women and I feel privileged to have met you all. I love that you are willing to share your stories with each other and would like to encourage you to read the blog where many YinOva patients have passed on something they have learned. I have been particularly struck recently by Suzanne’s description of her recovery from breast cancer, Jane’s essay about her stroke, Monika’s story about her breech baby and Kate’s description about how her fertility diet got out of control. Over the years I have learned so much from my patients. You are wise women and I have appreciated the chance to play a role in your healing journeys.

New York can be a complicated city to live in and I see us all, staff and patients alike, as a group of women trying to keep ourselves and our families healthy as we juggle our heavily scheduled lives. We are blessed to be able to support you all.

Recently I read some of the reviews of our center on City Search. I was struck by how often people mentioned our friendly staff. I feel very lucky to have Marie, Mark, and Sarah on the front desk. Each of them really cares about our patients and their warmth and kindness shine through. Many of the reviews mentioned that the office is immaculate and for that we have to thank Dorothy who puts so much energy into creating a clean and supportive environment.

My colleagues Liz Carlson and Margaret Sikowitz practice Chinese Medicine at a very high level. They bring love, compassion, skill and humor to their work. I feel very lucky to have found them and know, because you tell me, how much you appreciate them. If you have never experienced her work I would encourage you to do so.

As many of you know I’ve just finished writing a book with Dr. Sami David. Making Babies will be out next year and I hope it will be useful to many of you. Dr. David is a very good doctor and a kind man and I am grateful to be able to share so many patients with him. His experience and wisdom have enriched my knowledge of fertility medicine.

On a personal note I’m grateful to my husband Noah, who has always supported me 100% in my work and has understood why I find it so consuming. Many of you have met my daughter Emma because she often works for us in the school holidays. She is a source of love, laughter and sunshine in my life and I am proud of the woman she is becoming.

So thank you all — my friends, colleagues, family and you our patients. Together we’ll get through what life throws at us. I look forward to continuing to serve you.

— Jill

© Ingrid Balabanova | Dreamstime.com

Hello Everyone!

It’s Emma, Jill’s daughter here. I’ve hijacked my Mum’s blog to thank all of you who supported my trip to Thailand to take part in the Water Project. Without your generous donations none of it would have been possible. So…Thank you.

As some of you know I was in Thailand as part of an ongoing project that my school organizes in conjunction with The Pakanyor Foundation. Our task was to build a well and purification system for a village without access to clean water. My school has sent a team to do this every year for the past 20 years so it felt like a real privilege to carry on the tradition. We lived with the villagers of Ban Huay Laung and worked along side them to build the well. I have been back for about a week and no longer take turning on the tap for granted and it is safe to say that my appreciation for the smaller things has grown, and my hunger to help more people has increased.

Getting to Thailand was very exciting! We were all so ready to get to the village and do some work. However we needed to spend some time acclimatizing to the hot weather. During this two-day period we got the chance to see a past project from our school.

Seeing this project was just the motivation we needed before we started work ourselves. It was nice to see the effect it had on the village and we were pleased to see it still worked!

I thought that the village we were to be staying in would be very luscious, with deep, dark brown soil, and loads of animals. I guess I had an image of the jungle in my head. Whilst we were far from any town or city and we were in a forest setting, it was vastly different to what I expected. The leaves were light green and looked dry. The soil was a bright red/orange colour, almost like clay, and there were only a few very skinny cows, loads of cockerels and some hungry dogs running about. During these two weeks we all stayed with the villagers in their homes. This was such a privilege and it was very kind of them to let us stay. I, with two other girls, was in a hut with a very old woman who was deaf, and slightly blind. It was really hard to communicate with her and at first we thought she was just hostile at the thought of some western kids coming into her village. Then we found out she was deaf and so we made the effort to communicate in other ways. It was nice, sometimes after a hard day’s work we would all just sit in the hut and write in our diaries and she would come out and just sit with us. After a while it just felt like the girls hanging out!

For the first week our task was to bring poles four kilometers up a mountain and drop them off by the water source and then dig using hoes back down to the village so that the poles would have a place to lie.

During this week we also built a mini well that in time would collect the water from the water source, filter it, and then run down the through the poles and into our tanks.

Our first day at the village was our first day of work, and we were all enthused and really, really hot! So we all took one of the poles each and started to carry it up. Two kilometers up we decided to have a mini water break only to be passed by a sixty-year-old woman carrying four poles all by herself! We felt a bit lame and it also showed us how badly they all wanted this water supply. (Needless to say the next day we all carried three or four poles!)

During this first week we managed to lay the poles, glue them together and start to build the base for the tank.

Towards the end of the week we started to build the tanks, and in order to do this we needed to make a base. We did this by laying down big rocks then putting down a grid, adding more gravel, and then cementing over it. It was almost like a cake! We mixed all of the cement ourselves, and when the villagers would mix it they would make it look so easy. However when it came to our turn to churn, we all struggled a bit. But with the extra hands and four people working on it instead of two, we found that we were just as speedy!

It was nice that that we worked alongside the villagers because it created a tighter bond. I remember having really good conversations with all of them, yet neither of us spoke very much of each other’s language, only the basics really! That didn’t seem to stop us though; they were all very kind and generous people.

After each day of work we would come back down to the village, change our clothes and then hang out a bit before dinner. It was always really fun to play with the kids, we would give them bubbles, or crayons and they would just be amused for hours! They loved having their pictures taken because they were fascinated by the fact that they could see it right away. The children were all very sweet and very happy. They were so much fun to play with!

The second week focused on finishing the tanks. We split the tank into four sections, so we would do a new tier everyday. We had molds and so we would oil the side that was facing in so that the cement would not stick and then once positioned we would fill it up with cement mixed with gravel. This meant that our days would usually end earlier than the week before because there was only so much we could do until it dried!

Towards the beginning of the second week we saw the water running through the pipes for the first time! They were already laid close to where the tanks were to be, and there it was, just running, and free! It was so exciting to see it for the first time, because it was really motivating!

Once we had finished all the tiers it was time to clean it up and make it look even. We rendered the outside of the tanks with cement, but this time there was no gravel added in the cement, which made all of us sore-armed people very happy, as it was much easier to mix! We built a roof and used every resource we could find to make sure it was sturdy. It was nice to see that nothing went to waste. We used excess bamboo from the scaffolding to create the base of the lid. Then we used all of the bags that the cement mix came in to make a sort of paper mache.

Before we knew it, it was time to leave and I wasn’t sure what to think about that. I knew I was going to be sad but I didn’t know why exactly, as I had a mixture of feelings. I was sad to leave all of these people whom I now considered friends with the knowledge that I probably wasn’t going to see them again. I was sad because I knew this village was only one of many villages that do not have a clean water supply and that what our group did was only scrape the surface. I did, however, feel inspired by what eighteen kids could accomplish with nothing more than enthusiasm and hard work. I hope to encourage other people to make an effort and get involved.

My time in Thailand was unforgettable and I am so grateful to have had the chance to go. Thank you, thank you to all of you who contributed to the project and to all of you who supported me!

Emma Thake

Emma Thake © August 2008

Photographs
Emma Thake ©

Many of you have asked about the little girl whose pictures and letters decorate our waiting room. Her name is Kunthea and we are proud to sponsor her through the Cambodian Children’s Fund.  She is nine years old and before being accepted at CCF she lived with her mom and grandparents in a small shack on the Steung Meanchy garbage dump in Phnom Penh. She helped her mom pick through the garbage to earn enough to eat. Thanks to the wonderful people of CCF she now has a place to sleep, good food and is getting an education. She also goes home to see her Mom every evening.

The Cambodian Children’s Fund was founded by Scott Neeson, a former film industry executive, who was profoundly effected by the plight of children living in the garbage dumps of Phnom Penh. Such was his commitment that he quit his job, sold his possessions and relocated to Cambodia to start a children’s center. With the help of donors the project has grown into several centers that provide shelter, food, clothing and education for 250 kids between the ages of 5 and 14. ABC news recently reported on their work and you can see a slide show about CCF here.

You can donate to CCF in many ways including making a monthly commitment to sponsor a child. The organization encourages communication between the sponsor and the child and we have had great fun exchanging emails with Kunthea and learning about her life. Those of you who visit our center will have seen the wonderful art work she has sent us. In fact some of you have told me that you have been inspired to sponsor a child yourselves.

When Kunthea first wrote to me and told me her story, my heart hurt to think about what she already been through in her young life. She wrote about living on the dump and working with her Mom as a garbage picker. She talked about how hard it was to live without a father and how she had never been to school. She described meeting Scott and asking him if she could come to CCF and her elation when she was given a place at the center. She is studying English, Khmer, Math, Science, Social Studies, Painting and Home Economics and was thrilled to win an award as most improved student at CCF2.

By an accident of birth her start in life was a difficult one and we are so thrilled to be able to play a small part in helping her fulfill her potential. Sponsoring a child at CCF costs about the same as a daily Starbucks here in New York City – it seems like a very small price to pay to have a profound effect on someone’s life, doesn’t it?