EMPOWERING REFUGEE/MIGRANT MOTHERS THROUGH KNOWLEDGE AND COMMUNITY
Contact and Information
Description
At AMURTEL Greece, our all-women team works with mothers from pregnancy through to two years after birth. The mothers come from diverse backgrounds, primarily Middle Eastern and African countries, where social inclusion and opportunities for development are often scarce or lacking. We aim to help them overcome the inherent isolation and feelings of helplessness due to social, cultural, linguistic and ethnic marginalization in the Greek society. Our educational program begins with aspects of mothering since this is the common and urgent factor in all their lives. From there, we move on to more sensitive topics of health care, specifically sexual reproductive health of which there are generally large gaps in their knowledge. Proceeding on, we talk to them about rights — human rights, women’s rights, children’s rights, refugee or migrant rights — as well as discuss at length the place of women in prevalent social systems. This often leads to discussions on how to develop themselves beyond the personal and social identity of being a mother. These discussions also bring out revelations of mental and/or physical abuse in their living situations underlined by deeply ingrained feelings of dependency and powerlessness. From this point, we support the mothers with social work, referrals to appropriate community resources, accompanying them to bureaucratic institutions, etc.
Simultaneously, a strong focus is on the continued training of mothers to become peer supporters so that they themselves are at the core of the program. They are in a position to understand each other’s needs and take initiative to fill those needs in a way that the remaining international staff are not. We see our role as supporting them in this task.
Background
Our project began in 2015 with the unexpected wave of asylum seekers from Syria and other countries entering Greece. Our initial focus was humanitarian relief in the form of midwifery and lactation consultant care for pregnant women and mothers with infants. In 2016, we opened a day center in a migrant area of Athens. Since then, our programs have grown away from immediate relief towards initiatives of empowerment through education, integration, and creating community. The educational support groups which arose due to the needs of the mothers, including sexual reproductive health literacy, infant care, child nutrition, parenting and many more, resulted in noticeable increases in the women’s self-confidence and agency. Their enhanced ability to care for the health of themselves and their families, combined with the growing ability of them to think critically and express their opinions, saw the emergence of more self-reliant, proactive women.
The newly expanding phase we are in has a twofold emphasis. One is on supporting the many mothers beginning to come forward with stories of domestic violence. And the other is integrating the peer training graduates as group facilitators and community leaders. We hope in the next years to support them in forming more complex, sustainable self-help groups, both in the AMURTEL center and in their communities, to address not only health concerns but also wider social needs.