Through participation in the 1up Single Parent Resource Centre’s MOMentum Series: Moms & Mentors, isolated single mothers, who are often grappling with poverty as well as the emotional and psychological difficulties that often accompany relationship dissolution, are matched with volunteer Mentors and offered opportunity to develop capacity both in building strong community connections and in developing positive living skills. The aim is to increase their self-reliance and resiliency and help them become stronger individuals and mothers.

Each year, 30 to 35 moms are matched with mentors to form close relationships that foster the development of the moms’ innate parenting capacities. The program uses a non-judgmental, strength-based approach to help moms recognize and harness the inner resources they already possess to be loving with their children.

The MOMentum series promotes the value of volunteerism by carefully matching moms with volunteer women from the community who act as Mentors, and who receive ongoing training and support from the program coordinator. The moms and mentors make a year-long commitment to meet weekly for support, friendship, and fun.

As well as the weekly pair meetings, there is a monthly gathering at a local community centre where all the moms and mentors, together with their kids, share a nutritious meal and listen to speakers on a variety of relevant topics (e.g. cooking on a shoestring budget, financial literacy, container vegetable gardening, adolescent sexual health). While the moms and mentors enjoy some “adult time”, the kids play and get to know each other under the supervision of fully-trained ECE-qualified childcare providers.

The program, which has been running in Victoria for 14 years, is offered free of charge to the moms who participate.

An October 13, 2019, CBC News article includes an interview with Sanni Rosebrock, the program coordinator with the resource centre. She comments, “So many of the moms in the program either don’t have family or don’t have anybody neutral, or just need to kind of navigate being single with children.”

Lynn McCaughey, who has volunteered with the program since her retirement, notes, “[One of the] first moms I mentored said you feel like you’ve been left behind and everybody else is able to go out on outings on the weekend. You can’t afford it. You can’t take your kids to the museum. You can’t necessarily participate in things in the community.” One of the moms who has been paired with McCaughey says that meeting McCaughey changed her life. McCaughey was able to help her with anything from improving her resume to helping clean her oven. “Even now if I have a problem, I call Lynn, not my mother, not my family. I call her. Without her, I don’t know who I would be.”

Rosebrock expressed a concern that people seem to have less time now to commit to the program, that the city is getting busier every year. The program has such value, that she is hopeful potential mentors will continue to make time to volunteer. The program has clearly demonstrated that the gift of time pays off significant community dividends in the close relationships and increased capacity of the moms who are supported in through these one-to-one connections.