History

HISTORY OF BIGSHOES, PREVIOUSLY KNOWN AS CHOMP

Bigshoes, previously known as Children’s Homes Outreach Medical Program (CHOMP) was founded by Dr. Michelle Meiring and Dr. Gayle Sherman during 2002.  Dr. Meiring continues to run Bigshoes five years later while Dr. Sherman is now looking after a national project on early HIV testing in infants.  Following is a narration by Dr. Meiring on how CHOMP was established out of personal interest and love in caring for children affected by HIV/AIDS.  Initially the focus was on providing medical care and attention to children living in homes but it was soon realized that children in homes were simply the tip of an ice-burg.  Orphaned and vulnerable children living in communities who had no one to look after them and barely a place to live in were as vulnerable if not more to morbidity and premature mortality caused by HIV/AIDS.  Hence the transformation from CHOMP to Big Shoes, providing medical care to children living in homes as well as in communities.

The Beginning of CHOMP – My story

By Dr Michelle Meiring

“Our truest life is when we are in our dreams awake.” - Henry David Thoreau

I guess for me the idea of a project like CHOMP arose out of my experience as a Paediatric Registrar in 2000. I lived in Heidelberg at the time and had to travel to Baragwanath Hospital and back every day. That left plenty of time for listening to the radio, thinking and dreaming…. (thankfully I didn’t have any accidents!)

One day while driving to work listening to the radio, I heard the story of a woman who had started a children’s home for HIV infected children in Johannesburg and was looking for some professional medical assistance. Given the life of a Paediatric Registrar, I didn’t really feel I had the time (or the energy) to get involved in anything more than my clinical duties at the hospital but somehow felt compelled to investigate.

It was this involvement with Lambano Baby Sanctuary that got me in to the whole “children’s homes business”. They taught me how to love “AIDS babies” again. As a registrar in the pre- antiretroviral era, like many of my colleagues, I was numbed by the number of children dying from AIDS in the hospital. I wouldn’t look them in the eye; I wouldn’t bond, because I knew they were only going to die on me. I was angry with them when I’d been up all night trying to save them, and they’d just turn around the next day and die.                                                                                  
                                                                                       
The tremendous love this home showed to these children made them “more human again” and the use of privately sponsored anti-retroviral treatment restored my defeated spirit. I quickly became more interested and fulfilled by my volunteer job than “my real job”. I ruminated on that Heidelberg road again, about how I could turn my volunteer job into a career.

At the end of my “reg time” in June 2002, I joined Dr Tammy Meyers at the Paediatric HIV treatment clinic at the Chris- Hani Baragwanath Hospital. It was then that I met Dr (now Prof) Gayle Sherman. I’ll never forget one of our first conversations where we shared similar experiences of “mislabeled HIV babies” in children’s homes. Gayle had been asked by the Department of Health to assist with early HIV diagnostic testing at Ethembeni Children’s Home as far back as 1997.

Towards the end of 2002, Gayle and I started to talk to people about starting what we then called “the orphanage project”. We called a meeting in August 2002 of children’s homes that we knew of to get an idea of the need and their interest in such a project. We also approached organizations such as Childline and the Johannesburg Child Welfare Society to get input from them.

Gayle continued to write funding proposals and more funding proposals and when we finally got a “YES” from the Rockefeller Brother’s Fund, the project was started in January 2003. I and my unborn baby were the project’s first employees. Gayle, although she never collected a salary from the project, continued to direct it, manage the finances and write more proposals. During my maternity leave, Drs Terri Nunes and Stephanie Jones assisted by a newly appointed project coordinator, Jana Perold, kept the project going.

After my daughter Kerry was born, I decided to work from a “consulting room” that I set up at the back of my house. This didn’t last for very long. After Kerry contracted “roseola” from one of the homes’ babies; I decided it probably wasn’t such a good idea!

Dr Stephanie Jones joined the project full time in 2004 when our Anglo American Funds came through. The two of us initially worked from a shared office at Coronation Hospital and invested in “time-shared” space with the Coronation PMTCT clinic. Stephanie was a joy to work with: her enthusiasm for life, exceptionally gentle bed-side manner and passion for palliative care were very contagious.

We were fortunate to get space at The Memorial Institute for Child Health (TMI) in Braamfontein in the early months of 2004. This Institute that was formally the Johannesburg Children’s Hospital has become the home of several NGO projects working in the children’s sector. It is an honour and privilege to work alongside people from organisations such as the Teddy Bear Clinic, Childline, The Sunshine Centre etc. It is also extremely handy to have the Department of Community Paediatrics, the Dentists and child and adolescent psychiatrists on our doorstep! Renovations for this space were gratefully sponsored by Naledi: a Luxemburg based adoption agency.

Thabi Mbuyisa, our second project co-coordinator joined us in 2004. The project’s training component received a boost of vivacious energy when Samantha Stewart was employed on a part time basis to assist with project management and training in August 2004. When Stephanie left towards the end of 2004, Dr Janet Lumb was employed as a sessional Paediatrician to help with the clinical load.

Gayle resigned as Project Director at the end of 2004 to devote more time to improving early HIV testing for infants nationally and handed the reigns on to me in 2005. Although initially quite daunted by this prospect it has been a tremendous privilege to be given an opportunity to direct this project. I will always be grateful to Gayle for starting the project and for all that she taught me during our time on the project together.

2006 saw several changes at CHOMP.  The plans for extending the project beyond the children’s homes and also beyond our provincial border were materialized.  2006 saw the introduction of a community outreach component to our clinical activities as well as the launch of the project in Durban.  As the project had expanded beyond the children’s home environment, the name CHOMP was no longer suitable.  After much deliberation the name Bigshoes was identified as it suited the bill for providing medical interventions to assist orphaned and vulnerable children (OVC) to grow up to fill big shoes. 

As Bigshoes transformed, it also grew with more staff joining our roster.  To accommodate the additional staff and activities, we were lucky to have been able to move to a new space within the TMI building.  Being an old hospital ward, this space was quite run down with peeling walls and ceilings and stained bathroom fittings.  The renovation of this space was gratefully sponsored by Discovery Health.  This is an ideal space for us as it allows us to conduct medical clinics as well as training simultaneously. 

Today, Bigshoes operates three children’s clinics a week, two from our space at the TMI and one from the Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto.  Additionally, Bigshoes provides outreach medical services to four children’s homes in Johannesburg and paediatric palliative care at Baragwanath and at a Hospice in Soweto.  In recent years, Bigshoes training has also taken a big leap forward and provides 5-day long training courses to child and youth care workers from homes as well as from communities.

Bigshoes has, over the years, grown from a two person operation to now an organization run by eleven dedicated staff.  With every step forward, Bigshoes is growing to fill bigger shoes.  With support from all our valued funders we hope that this growth continues so that we may fulfil our vision to serve more OVC with medical interventions that they so desperately need.