Moms and babies get Christmas boost
Presents greatly appreciated after home was damaged in flood
WATERLOO REGION — This Christmas, a Waterloo elementary school’s gift to moms and babies at a live-in support home will be extra meaningful.
Since the end of November, 10 classrooms at Sir Edgar Bauer Catholic Elementary School in Waterloo have worked to fill laundry baskets of goodies for expecting and new moms at Marillac Place.
Each mom gets two baskets: one with personal items, including books, scarves, and pyjamas, and a second basket with items for the baby, such as baby wipes and toys.
On Friday, the overflowing baskets were loaded into a truck for delivery to Marillac, where they will be opened by the moms on Christmas Day.
“It really shows (the moms) … that the community and region cares and wants them to succeed,” said Kelly Walberg, the fundraising and office co-ordinator at Marillac Place.
The basket program, which has been organized by the school and St. Michael’s Parish since
2011, will have a bigger impact on the moms staying in the house this year, due to a recent flood at the home.
On Oct. 27, a broken toilet caused serious water damage to all three storeys of the residence on Young Street near Weber Street West.
“We’re talking ceilings, walls, floors — everything has to be ripped out and replaced,” said Walberg.
All seven women and four babies in the residence had to live in a temporary residence until Dec. 1.
“It was very stressful on the women having to relocate,” said Walberg.
“Five weeks felt like a very long time for them, just to have to be out of their routines and out of their home.”
Marillac Place has the capacity to take in 10 pregnant and parenting youth between the ages of 16 and 25 each year.
The home provides moms with a variety of supports and programming, including counselling and life and parenting skills. The facility also works to connect women to community supports they may need when they have to leave the centre in a year’s time.
It is Marillac’s mandate that led Diane Jones, the social justice co-ordinator at St. Michael’s Church in Waterloo to strike up the laundry basket program with the elementary school years ago.
“I think Marillac Place has a very unique approach to helping moms who are single and struggling,” said Jones.
Every November, Jones hosts an assembly at Sir Edgar Bauer to explain what the home does and to launch the laundry basket program.
“We’ve had moms come with their babies, moms who are living there or who have graduated from Marillac Place,” she said.
“I think it educates the whole school about how hard it is to be a single parent … of how hard life can be for some kids and how to help.”
Walberg said holiday donations, like the baskets put together by students, are stretched to last a year.
While the majority of the home’s operations are funded by the Region of Waterloo, there is still a need as some moms come to the home with nothing.