Mom2Mom gives a helping hand to mothers living in poverty

Stacey Bonenfant, Chrislana Gregory and Madeline Cureton meet every few weeks for leisurely lunches or walks by the beach as any group of girlfriends would.

Their friendship is the result of a Vancouver program called Mom2Mom that pairs volunteer moms looking to give back to their community with moms living in poverty who desperately need a support system.

The friendships have proven to be invaluable to women who are otherwise alone with their kids. For Bonenfant, who was paired with her new friends just a year ago, it's made a huge difference.

Starting again after a hard time

Bonenfant has started her life all over again, and it's been a struggle. 

"Being a mom right now for me, is stressful, financially, spatially. My children have some special needs, especially my older one. We've been trying to get some help for a while and sometimes that's not so forthcoming, so that can be very stressful," she told CBC News.

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This is Bonenfant's second go at motherhood. She has three grown daughters from a previous relationship, but has no contact with them. When her marriage fell apart, her life also unravelled and she found herself depressed, addicted to alcohol and drugs and eventually homeless on the streets on Vancouver.

"I thought if I...don't have to worry about them for a little while maybe I can get myself together, because I was already struggling, obviously," she says.

"Then I ended up here and it was a lot of bad choices," she adds.

Bonenfant says she doesn't know if she'd be alive today if it wasn't for her son Dragon, now 11. She got clean when she found out she was pregnant with him and credits him with saving her life.

"It was him, really. I couldn't use because I was pregnant and then by the time he was born I'd been clean for long enough that I was fairly stable," she says.

Five months after having Dragon, Bonenfant found out she was expecting her second son, Legend. 

Struggling to make ends meet

Raising them both on her own has been a challenge. She lives in public housing in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside and relies on food banks for her groceries. She collects welfare and holds down a job, which brings in a total of $1,435 a month. She says her day-to-day reality is always living close to the edge.

"It's hard...very frugal shopping, creative in your cooking because sometimes you may not have half of what you want to make in a meal, so you have to make it up as you go," she says.

Bonenfant has been resourceful, tapping into many of the support programs available to families living in poverty in Vancouver, including a special school for her son, music classes for both her boys and community centre programs.

A conversation with her sons' pediatrician led her to one of her most helpful support systems.

"We'd been talking for a few months about things and life and strategizing on how to fix, make things smoother and better for us, she suggested that M2M might be a good program for us," says Bonenfant. 

Within a few months she was part of the organization.

Creating a support network

Mom2Mom is the brainchild of Dr. Barbara Fitzgerald, a developmental pediatrician who's been working with inner city families for close to two decades. She came up with the idea after realizing her patients needed more than she was able to give them.

"What these families need is not high-­price medical care. What they need are actual necessities of life for their children so they can be great moms and their kids can be great kids but not if they're looking for how am I going to feed them tonight," Dr. Fitzgerald said.

After consulting parents in her practice, Dr. Fitzgerald came up with the idea of pairing mothers living in poverty with what she calls "mentor moms," mothers from middle­ or higher income backgrounds.

The idea was for these women to offer support, guidance, advice and friendship to mothers living in poverty and, through those relationships, help alleviate some of the stresses of living in poverty.

The organization now supports 40 women and more than 100 children.

Bonenfant says she really looks forward to her meetings with Gregory and Cureton. 

Volunteers inspired to help

Her Mom2Mom mentors are moms with older children who were looking for a way to give back. Cureton said she also had personal reasons for wanting to help.

"When I heard the message from Mom2Mom and the one thing that I read that Barb said that really resonated with me, was when she said that so many of the mothers end up making their children their best friends because they don't have anyone else in their lives they can trust or rely on," she says.

I can remember when I was a child just praying my mother would just have a friend because I had to be, a lot of the time, her support network- Madeline Cureton, Mom2Mom mentor

"And, I can remember when I was a child just praying my mother would just have a friend because I had to be, a lot of the time, her support network and it wasn't that I resented it, it was that I felt sad for my mom that she didn't have anyone."

Chrislana was drawn to volunteer with the organization for different reasons. She was slowing down in her career, her kids were mostly grown and she was attracted to the message of Mom2Mom.

"It's something that's so grassroots and it's really so simple.... You create a friendship with another person and you create a relationship with another person. It's the most fundamental thing, I believe, that we do in our lives, all our lives," she says.

Stress relief

Bonenfant, Gregory and Cureton have created a close connection with each other in the year since they've been paired. They meet once every two weeks and do things together that any friends would, things like lunch, strolling around an art gallery, taking a walk on the beach.

Such ordinary activities seem like they wouldn't make much of a difference, but Bonenfant says the opposite is true.

"I call it self­-care because it's the only time, every two weeks I get this little block of anywhere between two to four hours where I don't have to worry about anything. I don't have to worry about money, how I'm going to get there, transit, who I have to meet or what I have to do. It's just all relaxed and there's no stress at all," she says.

Fitzgerald says the break Bonenfant is describing is actually much more important than most people think.

If you can lessen the stressful environment for the mom then she can do great things- Dr. Barbara Fitzgerald, Mom2Mom founder

"What's happened more ­­and the literature really supports it­­­ is that if you can lessen the stressful environment for the mom then she can do great things," she says. "These families need more than just government support — they need people who really care and who just extend some compassion to them."

Bonenfant says she can't get the same kind of support from her other friends.

"My friends, we all live in the same situation. We all have one foot kind of in crisis mode all the time, whether it's financially or emotionally ... So, to be able to talk to someone who doesn't have those kind of worries, who isn't so wrapped up inside their own issues that they can actually, kind of, be impartial and they can hear you," she says.

Once a month Cureton and Gregory also take Stacey grocery shopping and that alone has been a huge help to her.

"I get to buy a few treat things, a few things we usually wouldn't have," she says.

Mom2Mom was started four years ago in Vancouver. The organization is supported through private sponsorships and is currently looking to expand to other communities throughout the country. ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­