Heartbreak leads to success as Allanah focuses on helping others

ALLANAH Crameri regards the success of the non-profit peer support organisation and charity she co-founded in Ballarat, Babies Above, as somewhat bittersweet.

Since the group was launched in 2024, it has attracted more than 520 followers on Instagram and 250 members of its Facebook group.

While those are good numbers, it indicates to Crameri that many people are looking for the kind of help Babies Above provides: in-person peer support for families and parents who have lost a baby through stillbirth, medical terminations or other neonatal death.

“Obviously you want to reach that many because you want to help them, but it’s also really quite sad and devaststing that that many people have been through pregnancy and baby loss as well,” Crameri said.

Crameri and her partner Braydon Newell lost their newborn son Lenny in 2022, and quickly discovered there was not much face-to-face help and support available.

“In that next year we were looking for some support in Ballarat but there was nothing here – nothing online, no Facebook, no in-person events… nothing,” she said.

“So I started the private (Facebook) group in 2023.”

As more mothers got involved, Crameri teamed up with Kate Hurley, Emma Maloney, Ashlea Vagg, Maddison Hutchison and Chrissy George to form Babies Above.

The group has now expanded into the Moorabool shire, and Crameri is even beginning to think about establishing a Babies Above presence in various locations throughout the state.

“It might also encourage people, when they see what we’re doing, to do something similar in their area,” she said.

But at this stage, the plan is to schedule six support events in Ballarat and Moorabool a year.

In the meantime, Crameri and Newell welcomed their son Archer last December, after Crameri had earlier been named the Ballarat Citizen of the Year for 2025 for her work.

While she is on maternity leave from her work as an orthoptist, Crameri is busy helping to arrange various Babies Above fundraising events and coordinating delivery of care boxes and bags to local hospitals.

The group pays for things like that through raising its own money, although it does sometimes benefit from donations and grants – for example $10,000 from Community Bank Buninyong, which helped set up the care boxes program.

Its major event is a gala, the first of which was held last year and attracted 350 people and raised $50,000.

This year’s Glimmer of Hope Gala will take place on Saturday 17 October.

The best place to get in touch with Babies Above is through its social media accounts. A website is coming soon.

The actual support group on Facebook, Babies Above Ballarat Support Group, is private and requires membership, but the other Facebook page – simply called Babies Above – is where event details and other information is posted.