If you want to know if NOAH employees care about their work, ask Wanda Adderley who says, emphatically, "They do."

And she knows because of how closely they watched her daughter. Zora Sarai Emilius is Adderley’s 5-month-old daughter, who was being monitored by NOAH before she was even born.

Adderley is a client of NOAH’s Healthy Start/Care Coordination program, which provides in-home services to families in need of intensive services to promote healthy birth and developmental outcomes. The program, supported by the Children’s Services Council, includes comprehensive education and support services to families in Belle Glade, South-Bay and Pahokee. Interventions and goals are developed with families to cope with daily problems, break cycles of poverty, and lead to family self-sufficiency. The program worked for Adderley.

"When I was pregnant, Miss Brown (a NOAH employee) would come by and check in on me and ask me about my doctor visits and how the baby was growing, my due date and things like that," Adderley said. "She would ask me questions making sure I’m OK physically and emotionally and financially. And even after the baby was born, she came by and checked on the baby periodically. She was a big help.

"She would ask about my son (4-year-old Wieman Emilius Jr.) and if he was OK and how he’s doing in school. And when I told her I was ready to go back to work and to school she helped me find day care," she said.

Once Zora started attending Little Hands Learning Center, the NOAH representative even went there to make sure everything was alright.

Adderley plans to resume school in the summer; and she recently started working at HIPPY (Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters). She is a home visitor who works with parents, which is different from the services she receives from NOAH.

"We work with parents and we show them through role play what to expect and how to answer their kids’ questions and getting them ready for school with homework and everything. I do weekly activities for the kids helping them learn all different kinds of things," she said.

2007 ended with a bit of a surprise.

"Earlier, Miss Brown (of NOAH) asked me, when I was still pregnant, how many kids were in the house," she said. "I told her I have a little baby girl, I had my nephew and I had my son, and I totally forgot about the whole thing. Then right before Christmas, she brought the baby something, something for my nephew and something also for my son. It was so nice."