Photo: One Mother to Another team members: from left, Fiona Monks (Volunteer Development Coordinator) and Natalie Chung (Operations Manager).
Including hand written messages in care packages gifted to mothers in hospital with their sick child was a happy accident, explains Joy Reid, Co-Founder of One Mother to Another.
The happy accident happened when Joy was filling in some waiting time in hospital with her sick toddler and requested a pen and some paper to write some of these notes for the care packages she had with her.
“We started to receive incredible messages of appreciation for these notes and that someone had taken the time to write them,” Joy recalls. “From that moment we made them a permanent addition to our care packages.”
Joy Reid, Co-Founder of One Mother to Another, with an example of a personal handwritten note that accompanies every care package.
‘Caring’ is the guiding value of One Mother to Another, a Christchurch-based charity. It’s also the central ingredient of each care package delivered to every new mother in a neonatal unit in the South Island and to a selection of parents in paediatric wards. Around 8,000 packages are delivered annually, and a total of 43,000 have been distributed since the charity began a decade ago.
This level of thoughtfulness also extends to looking after the wider environment. “We’d started thinking about what small changes we could be doing to uplift the mana of the ground and the world that we live in, without taking away from the support we offer.”
Joy says the timing of the Terra Nova Foundation’s Earth+ Resilience and Emissions Reduction workshop was perfect for helping them to progress their thinking.
“It was a kind of lightbulb moment for us,” Joy says. “If we truly want to help someone, we need to know what the real cost of our products and operations is. Mapping our carbon footprint provided really useful insights into these issues.”
Based on these insights, the team have already made a series of changes to their care packages. These have included stopping purchases from Temu (due to not being able to verify product ethical information); changing to reusable cotton bags for the care packages; and switching from plastic to cardboard packaging for lip balms.
What One Mother to Another particularly appreciated about the workshop was the acceptance of where they’re at in their environmental journey.
“We are a whole bunch of mums operating this charity and none of us come from a place of environmental reporting or tracking,” Joy says. “But we are inquisitive, we are curious, and have open minds to want to make a difference.”
“There wasn’t any judgement which I think is really powerful. It was great to know that small changes can make a big impact, and being given information, knowledge and some tools to help us is really useful.”
“It’s given us permission to incorporate this environmental thinking into our mahi.”
The One Mother to Another team always enjoy the days when volunteers gather to put together the charity’s care packages.
Volunteers are the lifeblood of One Mother to Another – almost 170 volunteers gave around 4,500 hours of their time last year, and their numbers grew by 50% over the same period.
A number of the volunteers have also been recipients of the care packages, and so understand what a real difference the packages can make to new mothers in vulnerable circumstances.
Within this group of volunteers are a dedicated team of about 30 around New Zealand who write the personal handwritten notes. As Joy describes, “nothing says you’re cared for and seen more than the handmade items and these notes contained in the packages.”
Over the decade since the charity started the packages have grown to mean so much more than the original idea.
“The packages represent the wider community and the very personal connections we are creating here,” Joy says.
“It’s a very human connection in a moment that no one else can access. And this now extends to the environment we are working in – we want to make sure we’re caring for our world at the same time.”
The Earth+ Resilience and Emissions Programme is funded by Rātā Foundation with support from the Christchurch City Council. Follow this link to find out more.