mother nature - empowering mothers in their personal transformation
Mother Nature - Empowering mothers in their personal transformation is a project that has been founded by the Erasmus + project of the European Union from 2017 to 2020.
The general aim of the project was to equip professionals with adult learning tools and skills to support and empower mothers in developing, recognising and validating skills acquired through the informal learning experience of becoming mothers in order to foster employability, socio-educational and professional development.
The project results are
We believe that motherhood - especially in the first years - is an exceptional moment: we go through unexpected changes, we meet and overcome challenges, we transform. We acquire and strengthen new skills, the so-called "soft skills": problem-solving, empathy, managing, and many others.
Becoming a mother is a rite of passage into the next phase of our adult lives and into our interconnectedness with Mother Earth. It is a unique transformative experience mainly overlooked and sometimes misunderstood in modern societies. Through this project we learn to look at this journey with new eyes, discovering our gifts gained through the journey of motherhood and finding our authentic ways to accept and use them consciously in our lives.
Motherhood is a powerful informal learning process: through this project, we aim at supporting mothers in getting the most out of it by connecting with their inner and outer nature.
“Dear Mother Nature Team, thank you so much for all of your effort, your energy, your visions, your trust. I am deeply impressed and inspired by what you created and I feel blessed to be invited to join you on your path. It is a great honour and gift to have the possibility to join this project, no, this movement! from its early time and to have the chance to see it unfolding, growing and emerging.”
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Increasing the participation of women in the labor market is crucial to meet the Europe 2020 target to achieve an overall employment rate of at least 75% by 2020.
In 2014, women comprised almost 46% of people active in the EU labor market (EU’s Labour Force Survey 2014), a rate which is increasing but still lower than those of men in almost all Member States.
According to a Eurofound research, “motherhood is one of the key determinants of female labour force participation” (Eurofound 2016, The gender employment gap: Challenges and solutions, Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg). Our target needs’ assessment has confirmed that in the role of mothers women are often left behind in their ability to fully engage in career path, as motherhood is demanding a lot of their time and energy. On the other hand, our assessment, as well as other researches show that very often motherhood changes the perspective that women have on their career and that, in spite of being a hurdle, the experience of maternity may highly enhance some of the soft skills that are a key-factor for joining the labor market (i.e. problem solving, decision making, leadership and management, empathy, negotiation, etc.) (see Zezza, R. Vitullo A. “La maternità è un master”, 2014 and Katherine Ellison, “Mommy Brain”, 2011).
Our target group needs assessment (a survey-based enquiry lead between Dec 2016 - March 2017 addressing professionals working with mothers and mothers with children aged 0-3) has also shown that:
The most relevant issues faced by mothers are stress, time management, adjusting to their new role, work-life balance.
The most relevant concerns related to employment are: work/family life balance, conflicting roles, financial stability, refreshing professional competences, changing career path, not being able to find a job.
Lack of support by public services or private organisations for mothers in adjusting to their new roles, self-awareness and personal transformation, integration and validation of skills acquired through motherhood and workforce reintegration, in most of the countries of the present partnership.
Relevance of peer to peer supporting groups.
Mother nature’s diary
After so much dreaming and planning, in November, 2017 we start Mother Nature project! We, the project team of 9 inspired women and 1 man from Hungary, Germany, Italy, Slovenia and UK met weekly over 2 months, through computer screens to set up the frame, workplan, basic agreements, logistic details, working culture. We also informed our colleagues and national networks about our plans and set up local teams.
After months of online preparation over the 5 countries we finally met in January, 2018 in Sunny Hill eco community, Kostelec, Slovenia. It was nice to meet in person, get to know each other, really feel like a team, exchange ideas and educational methodologies, share about our own experience as mothers (and fathers), start working on the planned training methodology, complying the draft of the first planned training course.
A national Mother’s Journey event in Italy was the first occasion to bring together mothers and learn together using the Mother’s Journey framework.
In the following months project team members individually researched about educational methods, approaches and contents that can be accomodated in the Mother Nature programme. We met online to develop the training plan, create the graphic design and branding of the project, and the website that will accommodate the content. A FB page was also created to keep in touch with involved people and to get the word out.
By March, 2018 our website was up and running and a call for participants for the international pilot training event was sent out in each of the project countries.
In April, the National kick-off event in Hungary was organised, alongside with a full-day Mother’s Journey workshop.
In June 2018 we had our first pilot training! 21 mothers (and their families) gathered in Téreny, Hungary with 7 facilitators. See the beautiful photos below.
In October-December, 2018 an additional 10 pilot Mother’s Journey circles were set up in Italy, Slovenia, Hungary and the UK, with the double aim of organising support structures to mothers and to collect feedback to the Mother Nature team to develop our peer group guide. Reflecting on their personal transformation as mothers, using art-based activities and a series of structured exercise outdoors and connecting with the more-than-human world are important parts of the process. The partnership is working on developing an online support structure for the leaders of these groups as well as a workbook for mothers, a training curriculum targeting professionals supporting mothers and a deck of cards to explore the topic of motherhood.
The partnership had its second international team meeting in December in Germany, hosted by an intentional community in Bavaria called Nature community.
In March, 2019 we hosted our first training for professionals working with mothers, in Italy, Mondaino. It has been a rich empowering gathering for professionals and mothers from five different countries.
In Summer 2019 we have been working hard to finalise our products: the Mother Nature Guidebook, the Mother Nature Card Deck and the Mother Nature Journey Course guide for facilitators. In the meanwhile, more Mother Nature Journey Courses happened in Hungary, Italy and UK.
The partnership had its third international team meeting in October in the UK, hosted by Applewood permaculture demonstration site. Main topics of the meeting were preparation for multiplier events, closing the finances and preparing for follow up activities.
Currently, we are running and preparing different launch events in each partner country.