Super MOMS
Civil society making strides in community empowerment.
Source: FB MOMS NGO
A healthy democracy needs multiple checks and balances to ensure that powers and the people are not exploited. Generally, it is the three branches of governance that watch over each other; the judiciary, the executive, and the legislature, and at times the media as well, with their responsibility in ensuring awareness. However, another facet that plays a major role, and the subject of this article, is civil society.
With a population slightly over half a million people, the Maldives boasts over 880 registered civil society organisations, at least on a national scale. Many of these organisations represent sports, recreation, and youth groups, while others play pivotal roles in raising public awareness and advocacy for change. While their effectiveness is dependant on the cooperation of the powers that be, there are many such organisations that take matters into their own hands when facing societal issues.
Names that would sound familiar to readers would includes Child Abuse Prevention Society (CAPS), Maldives Association of Physical Disables (MAPD), Maldives Autism Association (MAA), Maldivian Thalassaemia Society (MTS), Society for Health Education (SHE) and many others. Yet a very recent addition to this growing list of names has been taking strides in community empowerment and improvement.
What started off as the first online motherhood community group in the Maldives, MOMS grew into a community of 37,000 members within three years, and for good reason. Providing a non-judgmental, accepting environment, MOMS aims to take the helm in providing help and useful advice and experiences of motherhood, for new mothers and old, on a safe and secure platform. Meaningful dialogue being key, their primary goal is to help women going through pregnancies and those who are planning parenthood, understanding that newly all of society’s issues can be nipped in the bud by proper childhood and childcare.
Run by an ExCo team of five volunteer ‘supermoms’ and four more core members, the three pillars that support their movement are women empowerment, the mental health and well-being of mothers and children, and also the fight against injustice and violence against both women and children. An intuitive reader would see parallels drawn between this organisation and a few others, yet each organisation takes their own approach to fixing societal problems and MOMS is no different. They align their work along four main campaigns:
1) HOPE FOR MOMS: is a fundraising campaign of MOMS with efforts aligned towards helping vulnerable families to address their immediate and long-term needs. This campaign aims to cater the needs of vulnerable families in providing the support they need on a daily basis.
2) RISING TOGETHER: is a campaign by MOMS that focuses on advocacy, awareness, and vocational training programs, with efforts geared towards the well-being and empowerment of women. This campaign puts forth the mental and physical health of women, and provision of the necessary skills and support needed to pave a brighter future for themselves.
3) SHAPING FUTURE: is a campaign by MOMS dedicated towards the well-being and education of children in hopes to provide them with different platforms to understand different aspects of their lives and instil core values. In addition, parents will be supported in providing the basic education needed for the children to lead healthy, happy, and productive lives.
4) UNiTE: is a campaign by MOMS which emphasis on rising against violence and abuse towards women and children. This nation-wide campaign will be directed towards raising awareness, advocacy, and community actions against abuse.
They fully utilise the tools of the day by racking up, in a month on average, over 1500 posts on their Facebook group, with over 16,000 responses. MOMS also steps beyond the online constraints and conducts multiple events throughout the year, not all of them aimed specifically for the benefit of their members but all of it for the betterment of the lives of others. Spanning over the entire nation by utilising the internet for coordination and communication, MOMS is assisted by island communities to conduct their events in every corner of the Maldives.
Awareness has been key, and they have taken into their roster vaccine awareness, breastfeeding awareness, cancer screening and awareness programs, and even education workshops in addition to workshops and seminars on preventing sexual abuse, improving mindful parenting and enhancing parenting skills, in multiple islands nationwide. They also conduct children-centric events, with fun-filled evenings in the capital as well as other islands, while also conducting Back to School campaigns, providing basic school items such as bags, uniforms, shoes, and socks, to over 45 vulnerable families across the nation.
They then loop back to their empowerment manifesto by conducting the MOMS EXPO, most recently held in 2019, where women entrpreneurs were given the chance to showcase their skills and sell there products, allowing them to grow their small, home-based business and promote more financial freedom for these people. With over 70 businesses participating, this event can be written off as a success.
As for aid, events such as MOMS Jumble Sale in 2019 raised over USD3,500 in support of the children suffering in Yemen, and this is just the tip of the iceberg. Another USD1,500 was raised in N. Maafaru in a collaborative event with International Aid Campaign, for their "Surviving Winter" Campaign. This was to help families in Yemen, Syria, Palestine, and Rohingya, to get through winter. While these are international movements, the local ones are not to be glossed over.
Over MVR547,000 (USD35,000) was raised and distributed in the form of aid for over 200 families in the year 2020. This was during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. It covered medical bills, accommodation, food, and even utilities, to ensure that these families were not left helpless as the world came to a standstill. MOMS proudly establishes that these families are under MOMS care, and their work has continued well into 2021 as well. At the time of writing this article, they had raised another MVR485,000 (USD31,000) for 320 families, and they take pains to ensure that recipients are verified as vulnerable.
MOMS has also helped, and continues to help specific single mothers with multiple children living in squalor, by assisting them in getting their homes refurbished and finances established. Some of these families are those ostracised by society and ignored by the administration, but the work done by MOMS brings the community back together in helping those described as vulnerable. The classification is bestowed with proper verification and criteria to ensure the aid goes to those who truly need it.
A cursory glance at the MOMS’s portfolio would make any Maldivian proud to be part of a population that has created such selfless, community driven spirit. However, the celebrations, while deserved, also underscore a very important and disheartening fact; the administration has been failing.
A lot of the work done by MOMS and other organisations are to patch the many holes in societal issues that are actually the mandates of elected authorities. So much of the vulnerable families have histories of trying to reach out to the administration for aid, and even the reasons they require aid are directly related to income discrepancies in the existing system.
It is disheartening when the importance of such civil societies is on the rise due to this reason. While the community comes together more and more, attention needs to be directed to the powers that be. They need to be held accountable, to ensure that government funds are properly allocated to meet the needs of the very people they are sworn to serve.
