Organizer: Cáritas Diocesana of Barcelona.
Collaborative institutions: Ramon Molinas Foundation, Generalitat de Catalunya and Ministerio de Trabajo y Asuntos Sociales.
Implementation schedule: 01/01/2014 – 30/11/2014.
The maternal and child support Mare de Déu de Montserrat, a project to help mothers that cannot care for their children
The Ramon Molinas Foundation has once again established a link with Caritas Diocesan of Barcelona. After supporting the Gavines long stay shelter in 2013, it has collaborated with the Mare de Déu de Montserrat mother and child support centre, a project aimed at mothers with children aged between zero and three years of age who have difficulties looking after their needs.
The project, located in Badalona and inaugurated in November 2013, allows the mothers with their children to attend the center every morning, from nine in the morning until one, during all the school year. The maternal and child support Mare de Déu de Montserrat offers assistance and help to these mothers, often very young, so that they can look after their children. The professionals that take part in the project teach the mothers to perform tasks such as bathe the children, prepare meals, or know what they need in every moment.
The maternal and child support also enables the creation of a space for friendship and relationship among the mothers attending the program, which becomes a collaborative network. The users share topics of interest related with feeding, pediatric care, or child psychology. On the other hand, the center offers talks and counts on with the punctual visits of the psychologists and pediatricians volunteers. In the current context, the service gives answers to the coverage of the families’ basic needs.
Cáritas Diocesana of Barcelona, an organization with a long humanitarian history
Cáritas is the worldwide organization of the Catholic Church. Cáritas Diocesana of Barcelona is within the framework that forms this organization. The delegation of the diocese of Barcelona was born in 1944 and since its beginnings it has taken in and worked with people in poverty and need.
The actions of the organization are framed within social action, the sensitization of the society, and the complaint of the situations of injustice with facts and words in order to obtain a fairer and more supportive world. The entity also fights against poverty, social exclusion, intolerance, discrimination, and against those actions that violate human rights.
Since 2007 the entity has doubled the number of people assisted and has detected that the attention to families elongates over time. 72% of the people that Cáritas Diocesana of Barcelona helped in 2012 had already been assisted before. Along that same year, Cáritas Diocesana de Barcelona assisted a total amount of 59,853 people and its community action partitioned more than 25 million euros among those who needed it more.
During 2013, the Ramon Molinas Foundation participated in the Gavines long stay shelter programme of the church organisation. The home is aimed at helping expecting mothers who are in the late stages of pregnancy or with younger children who are in a situation of social exclusion or are victims of different types of abuse.
Links of interest:
Cáritas Diocesana de Barcelona website.