Happy Baby Community
UK
Hundreds of pregnant women seek asylum in the UK every year, making a new life in the UK with a baby in tow. Adjusting to motherhood while cut off from their support network, dealing with after effects of violence and abuse, as well as coping with discrimination and poverty, leaves many women in a desperate situation.
The Helen Bamber Foundation set up the Happy Baby Community to give asylum seeker mothers and babies a safe place to play and access support. Another important function is empowering members to give back to the community: not only helping the group as a whole but giving confidence back to women who have lost everything. SEAD funding helped one such member, a woman from Eritrea with a two year old daughter, run a swimming group. She used the grant to cover travel and pool entry costs for up to fifteen families every week, as well as providing swimming costumes and swimming nappies. These meetups were extremely popular over this year's unusually hot summer. The group is hoping to add mum-and-baby swimming classes to their available activities over the following year
