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Bydelsmødre (Neighbourhood Mothers)

The Neighbourhood Mothers are primarily women with an ethnic minority background, who carry out voluntary work in their local area by supporting isolated and vulnerable women.

The Neighbourhood Mothers listen, convey important information, and build bridges between the woman and the area in which she lives, which can help her to better integrate. This help gives the women strength, so they can help and empower themselves, their children and their families.

Project Goal

Issue:

Some women from a minority background can be isolated, finding it hard to manoeuvre themselves in a society where they lack language and knowledge. They can be hard to reach for the state and municipalities, but often contain resources and competences that are invisible.

Assumption:

Building relations and networks based on knowledge, self-identification and trust gives strength to ethnic minority women in difficult situations to create the life they want for themselves and their children.

Goal:

The strategy of the programme is empowerment through local, voluntary communities and support to self-support. Mothers are often the key to the whole family when it comes to social and cultural integration.

The six key values for the project are recognition, respect, trust, equality, diversity, responsibility.

A photo of an event with many women present from a distance.

© Bydelsmødrene, 2021.

How it works

The mothers who are attached to the programme work voluntarily. They receive a basic education consisting of 15 modules concerning family life, women's lives and life in society, and how to support other women in the best way. The mothers seek out women who might be in need of help – in the playground, on the street, in the laundry room, for example.

The mothers do not give advice themselves, rather they listen and share with the woman opportunities she might not be already aware of. The three main tools for this work are: personal conversations, building bridges between the women and local society, and creating networks.

The programme also supports the efforts from the state, local municipalities and other authorities in order to solve the issues for the target group and develop the right solutions. The programme's volunteers function as "experts" on the target group. Through the programme, data are collected and shared with the authorities to ensure that the target group's own perspective is heard and to improve solutions and communication.

Examples of activities:

  • Guiding women to citizen service offices, the job centre, sports clubs, wet nurses etc.;
  • Collaboration with schools to ensure that ethnic minority parents are able to participate in meetings;
  • Arranging meetings with local police, including focus meetings on communication with teenagers;
  • Helping to solve misunderstandings between parents and their children's day care or school;
  • Helping authorities to communicate, in order to make sure the target group is reached and will understand.

A national secretariat coordinates all the local groups, and the programme is run by a leading group of seven people, democratically elected every year. There are more than 900 active mothers in more than 40 local groups all over Denmark, who between them represent 41 nationalities and speak 54 different languages.

Two women part of the project stading outside, wearing also medical masks.

© Bydelsmødrene, 2021.

Results

The programme has a number of positive effects, not only for the target group but also for the mothers who are volunteering, the families, local communities and Denmark as a whole. It creates more knowledge about society, renders the women more confident, eases their access to the labour market, helps to break negative social stigma and cycles, and reduces radicalisation.

Every year, more than 25 000 conversations are carried out. As a result, the programme's participants have shared the following:

  • 99% feel they have become part of a community;
  • 87% have improved their Danish language;
  • 97% have reached a better understanding of the municipality and where to go with an issue;
  • 96% have gained more knowledge of equality in the family.

Evaluation

The programme has been evaluated by a number of research institutions, between 2008 and 2016. The overall results have been very positive, as mentioned above.

Evaluations have also shown that the programme is a very good investment, as society will receive its investment back in return between three and ten times over a period of ten years. Find out more on this and access various evaluative reports here.

Who benefits

  • The target group of women from minority backgrounds;
  • The "mothers" who volunteer;
  • The families of participants;
  • Local communities;
  • Denmark as a whole.

Funding and resources

The total budget of the programme is around 4-5 million DKR per year (437 - 672 000 EUR). There are six full-time employees.

The programme's main donors are SIRI (The Danish Agency for International Recruitment and Integration), Velux Foundation, Copenhagen Municipality and Bikuben Foundation.

Many women in a group gathering, part of the project, clapping and smiling.

© Bydelsmødrene, 2021.

About this good practice

Details

Posted by
Michala Clante Bendixen
Country Coordinator

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