Dear fellow lactivists and professionals in supporting breastfeeding.

My request first: Would you please send your kind thumbs ups and words 
of support for us, to [log in to unmask] (our e-mail)  to help us keep up the 
spirit. The Finnish lactivists are experiencing an acute case of 
fighting fatigue and would appeciate it!

And here is the story.

I am the chairperson of the Breastfeeding Support Association in 
Finland. Ours is a 12 years old organization that has done lots of good 
work in Finland, organizing the BF-support hotline and internet 
services, educating peer supporters, translating and spreading the 
latest research, and influencing the government to arrange better 
services to families with babies.

In Finland it is common for civic organizations such as ours to recieve 
government funding. As we are not a big nor yet established organization 
our funding has been scant so far. We've mostly worked on "mother's milk 
and good will". We have had promises on more regular funding though.

Now it is the depression in Finland as elswhere, and changes in 
government funding are made. The horror news to us has been that instead 
of keeping the promises given to us, the government is planning to stop 
funding breastfeeding support all together. They would rather fund the 
older family support organizations (that have no knowledge and next to 
none of interest in breastfeeding) , and also feel that the public 
maternity services give adequate consultation to mothers. Wich is not 
true, but "they don't know what they don't know".

Our associotion is now doing lots of work to influence the decision- and 
policymakers to turn their heads. We have support from professionals and 
some politicians, but without LOTS of political pressure and media 
attention this will be difficult.

So, please just tell us we're important and wish as well. Support from 
the international community would mean a lot to our activists and 
workers (we now have three part time workers, but without funding there 
will of course be none).

The address was [log in to unmask]

Yours,
Karla Loppi
Chairwoman
Breastfeeding Support Association in Finland
= Imetyksen tuki ry http://www.imetys.fi/itu/english/index.php

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