Helping hand: Initiative to help mothers in direct provision

What comes around goes around. One example being the network of family and friends sharing gear when you have a baby: the babygros and slings your baby outgrows in a blink will have another life. The informal tradition makes economic sense and is environmentally friendly to boot.

But what happens when you don’t have those local connections, and money is tight? Those living in direct provision with children have the same changing needs as children grow. Last month’s White Paper may spell the beginning of the end of our appalling system for housing those seeking asylum, but it will take time to phase out. Meantime, parents with growing children have needs today.

In an inspired idea, Let’s Match Mums is an initiative that appears to replicate the casual passing on that more established families benefit from without a second thought. The scheme seems to have grown organically and hit the mark as one of those ideas that makes perfect sense.

Early in the pandemic Louisamay Hanrahan, with a background in developing tech startups, began organising volunteers to “feed the heroes” and get masks to nursing homes. On March 30th an asylum seeker in direct provision (DP) wrote to her Instagram @coronavirusvolunteers for help. “We urgently need gloves, masks, hand sanitiser, hand soap and bleach.”

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It was clear, as babies grew, the mothers in DP would need more items, and mothers who were donating would have more to give as their children grew out of stuff

Out of that grew Let’s Help Direct Provision (LHDP), bringing specific requested donations to asylum seekers, connecting volunteers with those in DP via the Let’s Help Instagram and website.

The mother matching evolved as they learned what was most needed. “Last summer, we put together baby boxes for expectant mothers in DP,” says Hanrahan. “We’d impressive volumes of mothers donating very high-quality baby products that asylum seekers were delighted to receive.”

When she was collecting stuff from one mum, Hanrahan recalls, “she said ‘Come back to me in six months when my child’s grown and I’ll have more donations.’ It was clear, as babies grew, the mothers in DP would need more items, and mothers who were donating would have more to give as their children grew out of stuff.”

That was the germ: “match mothers with children of similar ages with one another, to keep donations going and to ensure that we are listening to and considering the needs of asylum seekers”.

A Let’s Match Mums call-out got great response, and they’ve started matching. There’s substantial need. As of April 2020, 7,400 people, including about 1,789 children, lived in 38 direct provision centres in 17 counties. Families often live in limited space, with money scarce, and without local networks.

Hanrahan’s team of volunteers, co-ordinating storage, drop-offs and now pairing mothers, includes Tumi Gaonwe, who fled South Africa and has been in Ireland since 2019 with her boys, now aged 12, nine, and six months.

Now living in DP in Tipperary, Gaonwe recalls life in Johannesburg, “when you’re coming from home, where you had everything, cars, house, freedom, and you get to this small space. But at some point I look back and I say to myself, all these things would never buy my life. My life comes first. I am here and I am safe now. That’s all that matters.”

She reckons about 150 people live at the centre, including 60 or 65 children, mostly under 14. “It’s not easy to live in direct provision as a mother. There’s so much you need for the kids and especially with a newborn baby. In the age of Covid, with children in DP, it is not a good situation. The most difficult part in looking after your children is you don’t have freedom as much as in your own house. The children tend to not understand the situation. Why are we living in direct provision? Why is this happening? Why are we not like other children? As a mother in DP, you have to, every day, explain to children, all will be well, things will get better, tell them things will be fine, things will turn around. It’s a challenge.”

She’s “squeezed in” with her baby in one room, and the two boys share, with “no space to play with toys”, trying to learn remotely: “they don’t have enough space, at school they have space”.

Children living in direct provision have their human rights breached regularly, according to a report by the Irish Centre for Human Rights at NUI Galway in November 2020. DP also affects children’s education as parents who cannot work cannot afford school supplies, and “the living conditions in direct provision centres routinely fail to provide adequate space for asylum-seeking children to complete homework and study to support their education”.

Movement of Asylum Seekers in Ireland brings gifts and vouchers at Christmas, says Gaonwe, and the centre manager has shared some clothes from his family. But Let’s Help is the only organisation she knows of bringing regular donations to DP centres. For her, their best donations were baby clothes and nappies, toys for the older boys, and a laptop for Covid learning (the boys are in third and sixth classes).

Early in her pregnancy Gaonwe bought baby gear in charity shops. “I couldn’t afford brand new.” She knows very few Irish people and would love to pair with another mother. She says many Irish people donate things they don’t need to charity shops, “and that is where most of us get things. People might not realise there are people in DP who might need donations.”

To distribute Let’s Help donations, she asks management for a room “to prepare and put stuff together”, with help from other residents. “Then I call parents to come and pick things up, one by one. Whatever we have we all share together.” She also contacts people in other centres.

“I want to say thank you to all the parents who listened to Let’s Help and decided to do their donations. If people don’t know about DP – we need help as much as they can. It’s a plus to us. We are willing to receive anything they donate to us. Let’s Help is trying to reach all the centres. They are quite new but they have already made a difference.”

There's so much stuff you only use for such a brief amount
of time. That's the way it works in Ireland, everybody
passes it around

Ruth le Gear, in a large town in the west, has an 18-month-old daughter. She saw Let’s Match Mums online, thought “brilliant!”, and signed up. “I think the system crashed so many people signed up!” As luck would have it, next day on a walk in the woods with her partner, Graham Reid, they got chatting with another couple, out with their young son on a bike. They hit it off – Reid is from South Africa, Mateo* from Guatemala – chatting about cycling, and how Ireland is safer than their home places. Abby* is pregnant, expecting a girl, and they “matched” organically.

“We’ve so much baby stuff, so we offered it to them.” Slings, cot, baby bath, clothes, maternity clothes: “There’s so much stuff you only use for such a brief amount of time. And we were given so much. That’s the way it works in Ireland, everybody passes it around. The Moses basket that you barely use because the baby sleeps on you! They were so grateful. We explained, everybody does this, it is so normal, and so wonderful to be able to share. It doesn’t feel like anything special, what we’re doing.

“I was a little bit weepy, for the human connection. It was serendipitous.”

She mentioned the hook-up to a friend with an older boy, who got together bags of his toys, and they met up in the local market to give them the gear. “We’ll have loads more to give them.” The family lives in one room so they’ll wait till the baby is born. “She’s wearing my maternity clothes, and will pass them on to other women in the centre” who’re not as far along. They see the relationship as ongoing. “It was a lovely meeting of new people. Let’s Match is amazing, and then this just happened the next day and we matched ourselves. It’s very difficult to meet other people with babies or kids in Covid. That’s been a bit of a struggle for us.”

Mother’s Day

With Mother’s Day approaching, Let’s Match Mums want to connect with mothers in direct provision to offer help, and mothers who’d like to donate, or match with others, which can be anonymous. What’s needed varies, but the most usual requests (in good condition) include baby and children’s clothes; equipment and toys; nappies, formula, baby food; sanitary towels; school bags, copybooks, pencil cases, pens; school shoes, runners.

[ Letshelpdirectprovision.com/ ]

*names changed