Support for 200 vulnerable children and mothers

Dear friends,

Due to the needs and crisis in Ukraine, Romi's Way has decided to do all we can to support the  mothers and children in Ukraine. We are a women-lead organisation, mostly consisting of mothers, and our thoughts are with all the families affected by the conflict. Being a mother is the hardest job in the Universe, and doing this job in a war context is a challenge nobody should face.

Leaving your home behind with one back only means you are leaving behind your loved ones, family, friends animals. From a mothers' perspective, we know travelling with young children means that one back would normally only be filled with nappies, baby-formulas, toys and child clothes. If you only have one back to take with you when fleeing your home, it is likely that you will not fill it with nappies....

We have now collected large volume of baby and child clothing, childcare items, toys, bedding and some medical supplies and nappies for mothers and children in Ukraine. These will be delivered to Ukraine from Portugal via truck shipment, which is arranged by the city of Porto.  We wish from the bottom of our hearts that we could do more, and hope we will be able to collect more daily essentials to those in need. In addition, we have decided to gather some learning materials related to trauma and coping as well as child care in Ukrainian language to our Mother2Mother network, so that mothers can stick together, share and find peer support from this global group also in Ukrainian language. We are hoping to launch this network in May 2022. We have connected with non-profit organisations in Poland in order to explore possibilities of supporting mothers and children who have fled to Poland. 

In order to continue our support, we would be so grateful for your continuous support. With 1000Euros per month, we can collect and purchase daily items, rent the van for collection and delivery in Porto, pay an external driver for 2-3 days a month work, translate some materials to Ukrainian for the mother2mother network and keep building relationship and connections with other NGOs in Europe supporting Ukrainian mothers and children. We work mostly voluntarily, but if funds would allow, we would also consider having part-time support for 3-6months to coordinate the project and support with item packaging and purchases. We work with 100% honesty, transparency and extremely cost efficiently, so your donated funds will go to cover most acute needs and each euro can be traced. 

Lastly, we ask you to send your best thoughts, wishes and intentions to Ukraine and to people, animals and environment in Ukraine. World needs balance, and empathy and kindness is the remedy against any darkness and injustice. World uniting in compassion and empathy to defend those abused is an act that has power over political decision. We need your love, light and compassion. 

With gratitude,

Sari Bernardo -CEO, Romi's Way

This year has seen the proper start of our project supporting vulnerable mothers and their children. We will soon be publishing some' action photo report' on our social and digital media, so please keep your eye on our facebook and instagram accounts. Did you know we are now also on LinkedIn?

In October we rented an office from Coimbra Centre, mainly to store and sort the donated items for the mothers and to conduct trainigns for our mamamentors. We are so exhited to have a physical location now, and will share some seasonal wishes from our new premises soon.

In order to ensure we are helping the most vulnerbale mothers in need, we have spent the past months meeting and discussing with other local partners who work with abused women, victims of sex trafficing and human trafficking, underage mothers and socially excluded mothers and as a result, we have signed 6 Memorandums of Understanding (MoU) with them - ensuring we have the best approach to holistically support the mothers. We are soon to be delivering our December item boxes for these mothers, including second hand clothing for the children, books, toys and ecological & biodigradable cleaning products to help the mothers to meet their family's needs for the winter and Christmas season. 

We are now actively seeking for further funding to continue our project activities in 2022, and ideally expand our support from our 2021 target (30 mothers and their children) to 90-100 mothers and their children and to train 10-20 volunteer mama-mentors.

If you would like to continue your support, we are delighted to inform that this Giving Tuesday help us support the ones with the hardest job in the world: mothers! We need your help to keep this super important project going and reach as many mothers as possible.

Dear friend,

Firstly, I want to thank you. For supporting our work and believing that vulnerable children are worth empowerment.

Our work this year is more and more focusing on supporting vulnerable mothers (target 30) and their children ( up to 100) in the Central Portugal region. We are more and more convinced that mothers are the engine behind a balanced, sustainable and compassionate future as they are the primary caretakers and source of values for their children. Healthy, happy and balanced mothers will raise healhy, happy and balanced children.

But many mothers are simply overwhelmed, stressed and exhausted. And some mothers are vulnerable due to past abuse, rape or trauma affecting their every day life. These vulnerable mothers are oftern socially excluded and stigmatised by society and their chidren are facing the same issues. We at Romi's Way want to empower these mothers and their children to find their power and healing.

This autumn we have signed Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with five local and global Non-Profit Organisations working with victims of human trafficking, women rights and gender based violence in order to centrallised our support to mothers and children in most need. We are in process of training volunteer mentors to work with these famileis, as well as preparing activites in the region that will allow the mothers and children to receive psychosocial support, stress reduction activiteis and equine assisted therapy sessions. 

Please continue following up our project journey, and if possible, consider supportign us in the future too. 

We wish you a wonderful autumn,

Best regards,
Sari Bernardo & Romi's Way team

Greetings from Portugal!

Fixed plans can be a cause of stress and headache - and they do not work in a world that is subject to continuous change. We are Romi's Way have taken the time to review and adapt out project plans needs to address those within our target groups who need it most, and who are victims or struggling survivors of imbalance.

This process required adapting to COVID pandemic rules and new needs that isolation, loss of income and socialising opportunities have caused to children and their caretakers. Mother2Mother project was born from this need, targeting 250 children and 150 vulnerable mothers in Portugal who are struggling to support the needs and development of their children and who are facing stigma and prejudice from the society. Children are the leaders of the future, and mothers are the power-engine ensuring they have the attitudes, skills and values that it takes to be a good decision maker for the whole planet. Therefore mothers are not just important, but they are crucial for the future of humanity and the planet!

We have focused on proposal development and reaching out to grants & foundations to fund the start of this lovely and super important project fully or partially - with a small investment of around 50,000Euros per year we could indeed have a super impactful project and directly leverage 150 mothers and their 250+ children out from struggles and isolation. 

If we are successful with the project, our next report here is likely to share some development with this project. Fingers and toes crossed!!

Stay healthy, happy and hungry for opportunities to bend & adapt :)

Kindly,

Sari Bernardo
CEO - Romi's Way

Who would have thought last year this time, that the COVID situation would be having such a significnt effect on most of our lives a year later! Portugal, our home counry being one of the worse situations in 2021 has ensured our activities and efforts to get our hands into face-to-face activities continues to be in halt. 

But, as usual, we have (and will not!) stopped! We have actually prepared a 'COVID related' support project plan targeting struggling young mothers and their children in a way that engages them in two-way communication, sharing and receiving & giving donated itesm of needs. More impornatly, it allows peer support and mother-to-mother comfort to help our 'sisters' who have been affected financially due to COVID or even before the pandemic. 

Our aim as an organisation is to restore balance between humans, animals and enviroment and to remind us all on how that is mainstreamed to all our actions, is that we never seek to 'solve problems' caused by imbalance, but rather to act in a way that eliminates elements contributing to imbalance. For our support project to young mothers, poverty is the underlying imbalancing root cause and therefore our motivation is to leverage the young mothers out of poverty (not necessarily meaning lack of money kind of poverty, but also lack of self-respect, lack of empowerment and lack of joy are forms of poverty that we look into carefully). We look forward to updating you all on the developent of this project, which can be conducted with online and face-to-face modalities. So as usual, keep watching this space and maybe next report would provides some toe-ticklingly exhiting news.

Huge thanks for your continuous support and care!

Kind regards,
Sari Bernardo - CEO & Founding member of Romi's Way