Mamas for Mamas is a national charity that provides a hand up to Mamas and families in need. We help provide daily necessities like clothing, food, diapers, formula and much more.

I thought becoming a mama would give me instant access to this village of mama bears looking after each other. I was sorely disappointed. The closest I got to this village was the support from two other mamas in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit when my first baby arrived almost seven weeks early. Once I left the NICU and entered the general mama world, I truly felt that I would never belong.

What if we broke down the barriers of social class and invited mamas of every socioeconomic background to join an online community where everything was free or traded? All baby items, kids’ clothing, gear, and household items that were being sold online were now free. You just had to be kind to your fellow mama to receive what you needed.

Traditional currency presents multiple barriers to struggling families. Kindness as a lifestyle, however, removes those barriers. Beyond that, for those who aren’t struggling financially, the mama community would be a safe space where they could connect to alleviate their emotional poverty and isolation, meet friends, and find that elusive sense of belonging.

Technology and social media have been identified as contributing factors to increased mental illness and bullying, but that simply doesn’t have to be the case. It is merely a reflection of the currently accepted culture of having to be better than in order to be good enough. Clearly that’s not exclusive to mamas, but we’re biting off one piece at a time here.

After five years, we have drastically changed the mama mentality in Kelowna. As a result, we’ve expanded to fifty-four other chapters across Canada with our mission to make mamahood great again.