Danville Teenager Sends Comfort to African Infants

DANVILLE (CBS 5) ― Colette Ankenman is only 16 years old, but she's already found her passion. It started with a community service project in eighth grade.

"I knew I wanted to help babies, and about a week later we got an email from a family friend who lives in South Africa about this orphanage she goes to and how they needed hats and blankets," Colette remembers.

So the Danville teenager started knitting and soon had enough hats and blankets to ship overseas. Then she heard about the Baragwanath Hospital.

"Baragwanath Hospital is in Johannesburg, in Soweto, which is one of the poorest parts of Johannesburg," she explains. "There are seventy to eighty babies born there a day. It's the biggest hospital in the world."

Big -- but so poor, that infants are often sent home wrapped in newspaper or plastic.

"I knew I had to do something," Colette says with a quiet determination.

Three years ago, with the help of her mom, a pediatrician, and her dad, a lawyer, Colette founded the non-profit Baragwanath Blessings to provide hand-knitted baby hats and receiving blankets to those children in need. So far, she has collected and sent over 2000 hats and blankets to the Baragwanath Hospital in Johannesburg and this past spring she was able to visit South Africa and the place that first inspired her.

"It was the most amazing experience just handing them out and seeing the joy on their faces and the gratitude," Colette says. "There is a whole room of abandoned babies there -- really makes you want to do more."

Family friend Ann Smith is one of the 150 volunteers who now help Colette.

"She's 16 and she's doing all this and it's relentless!" Ann says. "It's inspiring just to see someone who cares so much and so I want to support that. Again, she does a lot of that. She's the one doing all the work."

Nothing goes to waste in this project. Items that are too heavy or not suitable for South Africa are donated to children in need in the Bay Area. So while most teens are focused on getting a driver's license, Colette dreams of starting a web site, and registering as a non-profit in South Africa to cut down on shipping costs.

She says, "There is also so much need in so many places in Africa, and around the world, so the more we get, the more we can help them."

So for helping give babies a loving and warm welcome to the world, this week's Jefferson Award in the Bay Area goes to Colette Ankenman.

By Kate Kelly

Click to send an email to Colette at Baragwanath Blessings.

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