Anoushka Talwar was born remarkably early, entering the world at 27 weeks and weighing just 2.2 pounds. Now a Girl Scout, the Georgia teen has unveiled an extra large size of compassion for other preemies and their families.
At 14-years old, she carries no ill-effects from her ordeal as an infant, yet she remembers the early stories about her and her brother, who was also a preemie.
“My dad used to tell me how he would read to me and my brother at the hospital every single day,” Anoushka told Atlanta Journal Constitution, “and how it was beneficial to a child’s brain and how it was a good way to bond with a child through an incubator.”
Now, through a new project, she wants to give other premature babies every chance to overcome their early challenges.
Babies born extremely early cannot be held by their parents, but rather must remain in their incubators in a hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). In this state, it comes highly recommended that parents talk, sing, or read aloud to their children.
This desire to help preemies led Anoushka to go door-to-door in her Atlanta neighborhood, asking for donations of children’s books for the NICUs of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta and Emory Johns Creek Hospital.
Her goal was to make sure these hospitals had children’s books available for parents like hers who wanted to read to their children. Hoping to collect merely 100 books at the start of her project, Anoushka amassed 450 from canvassing and setting up donation boxes at local businesses.
This allowed her to create two mini-libraries at the hospitals, and also earned her a Silver Award, the second-highest honor in the Girl Scouts.
“At every door and house I went to, I would explain what my project was,” she said. “Parents can’t have any physical contact with their premature babies. All they can do is sing, read and talk to them”.
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“Babies that receive loving words have double the vocabulary of those who did not – by the time they reach five years of age,” Christine Wollenhaup, director of Women’s Services at Emory Johns Creek Hospital, told the AJC.
Anoushka said the experience makes her want to pursue a career in law or as a detective in order to help other people, as well as push forward to try and manage the Gold Award – an achievement reached by only 6% of Girl Scouts. The high-school freshman also wants to join the TED club with the hopes of doing a talk one day on the subject of preemies or animal cruelty.
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