Future of Mothers’ Centre unclear following funding cut
A safe space for new mothers to learn breastfeeding, talk about the baby blues and practise some handy skills is in jeopardy as grant rules change and funding cuts to the Saskatoon Health Region trickle down to community programs.
Jasmyn Marshall’s second child was just a couple of months old when Jasmyn began volunteering as a peer breastfeeding mentor and hostess at the Mothers’ Centre at Station 20 West.
Once a week, she welcomes mothers and children to the gathering space at the core neighbourhood non-profit agency. On any given day, four to 20 women may be there for breastfeeding support, strengthening parenting and communications skills, cooking or sewing together.
“It’s just nice to have a safe, welcoming place to go to when I want to get out of the house for a little bit, where the kids can play and there’s other mothers. You don’t get a lot of that when you’re home with your children,” Marshall said.
Funding for the Centre is precarious since the Saskatoon Health Region indicated it will stop paying the Mother’s Centre rent as of the end of this month, said board chair Marjorie Beaucage.
The health region leases space for some of its programs at Station 20 West — including, for the past five years, the Mothers’ Centre as it “worked towards becoming a financially sustainable community organization” — but it “does not have an ongoing commitment to provide funding to the Saskatoon Mothers’ Centre,” spokeswoman Amanda Purcell wrote in an email recently.
“Saskatoon Health Region is working with Saskatoon’s Mother Centre to see how we can best support them at this time,” she said.
“It’s very discouraging,” Beaucage said.
Station 20 West may be able to reduce the Mothers’ Centre’s rent for a few months while it establishes a new revenue source, but the facility itself needs to be sustainable and pay its own bills, said co-manager Len Usiskin.
Now fundraising and grant writing are the centre’s greatest hopes. Beaucage said they would love to expand the sewing project, in which participants sew blankets, aprons and other items on commission using the centre’s five sewing machines, with the proceeds shared by the centre and the women.
She is appealing a decision from the Community Initiatives Fund, which had denied the centre any of the $25,000 it sought for a sustainability co-ordinator because the granters deemed that job is fundraising.
“It’s a social enterprise trying to address the social inequalities. Every non-profit has to do fundraising to keep the doors open,” Beaucage said.
One of the rule changes also prohibits honoraria except for elders. The centre provided small sums to participants “who basically run the centre for peer support,” and cannot afford the staff to “set up that whole system of economics,” she said.
“That’s why we applied for a sustainability co-ordinator/director for the centre to develop that partnership and resources to expand the sewing circle and other opportunities for women to make money and to keep the doors open.”
They could become more selfsufficient if they had more sewing machines and space to allow them to take more contracts to help pay the rent and other bills, she said.
It’s just nice to have a safe, welcoming place to go to when I want to get out of the house for a little bit, where the kids can play and there’s other mothers.