Support for Mothers and Women from Behind the Scenes

By Carolyn Waskeiwicz

Edited By Lauren Quirici

I am working at MotherWoman, a nonprofit organization located in Hadley, Massachusetts that supports and empowers mothers to create positive personal and social change.  Some of the ways that MotherWoman seeks to do this is by building community safety nets, impacting family policy and promoting the leadership and resilience of mothers.

I chose to work with MotherWoman because it is located in my hometown. I wanted to make an impact on women in my community, as well as in the Pioneer Valley.  My goal going into this internship was to make difference for somebody, and I believe I have done that by working behind the scenes and preparing the training sessions which teach facilitators to run support groups, ultimately helping the women who are in need.

MotherWoman is a very small nonprofit organization.  It employs three full-time staff and another three people part-time. There are also six interns from the five college community working with the group.

I am currently doing all the preparations that my supervisors need to run the different training sessions that MotherWoman offers. I often prepare handouts and packets of information which the participants receive at the training sessions. I also wrote and delivered donation letters to local businesses in effort to secure donations of food and supplies for the weekly support groups for mothers. 

My expectations were broad when I went into MotherWoman, and my goals are being met in a different way than I had imagined. I thought I’d be impacting mothers on the ground level, but instead I have been mainly supporting my supervisors in order to allow them to do the ground level support. I am hoping next semester to get out into the field, and to really see what these training sessions are all about.

I have learned that non-profits can be very hectic, and dealing with this has taught me to be more patient and accommodating. I have definitely grown throughout the semester, and have built up my own self-confidence and self-expectation along the way I love knowing that I can come into MotherWoman and have a task put in front of me, and with the skill set they’ve given me, I can quickly and effectively complete it.  I also enjoy the freedom that my supervisors have given me to complete work on my own.  It has been easy to make progress accomplishing my goals because I am supported in so many ways at MotherWoman. That’s what they do, after all. It’s no surprise that they support everyone in the office as well as they do the mothers in their target group.

It is frustrating that MotherWoman struggles to get all the support that they need. The office needs new things, such as a larger printer, to help them grow; but they also need to grow in order to be able to afford things like larger printers.  It’s a struggle. It feels good, however, to know that during my first semester, I have really helped to make the training program a stronger one by supporting my supervisors and helping them to quickly and effectively make decisions and to organize the training materials. I love that everyone at the organization is so passionate about being there, too, and that despite all the challenges, everybody works so hard to get the job done.