Let’s build bridges!

Project Time: 15. December 2020 – 31. December 2022
Program is granted by: State Ministry of Baden-Württemberg

Strengthening Resilience Through Digital Connection, Storytelling, and Collective Learning

 

In times of rapid change and global uncertainty, care work and community connection are more important than ever. The “Resilience through Care / Bridges” project set out to strengthen the digital and organizational capacities of the MINE network, empowering over 1,000 Mother Centers in 20 countries to stay visible, connected, and resilient.

Objectives

The project focused on three major goals:

  • Expanding digital competence across the network through training, webinars, and virtual events.

  • Fostering visibility of care work through storytelling initiatives like Tell Your Story and virtual walk-throughs.

  • Building a sustainable learning space through the foundation of the MINE Academy, inspired by the Grassroots Women’s International Academy (GWIA) standards.

Activities

  • Monthly Zoom meetings with grassroots organizations across Europe on topics like space, people, resilience, and inclusion.

  • An International Mother Centers’ Day 2022 online event titled Resilience through Care with speakers from across the globe.

  • A Storytelling Project where women and centers shared their experiences, challenges, and strategies in video form.

  • An in-person MINE Academy week in Budapest (September 2022), bringing together organizations from 9 countries for shared learning and networking.

The main objective of this project is to expand the digital and technical capabilities of the organisaton and the network. MINE wants to continue to expand the work in dialogue, in personal encounters and the “4 eyes principle” inherent in mothers’ centers with new forms of participation and make them available to our 1000 centers in 20 countries worldwide by creating digital dialogue and communication spaces. The formulated goals of the international network of mothers’ centers, to make the realities of life visible and to strengthen caring and lively neighborhoods, should also be digitally conveyed and implemented. In order to be able to stimulate and design new participation and learning experience projects in the future, we need the expansion of digital possibilities to be able to offer training courses and webinars.

The call to participate “Tell your story” will be used as an analogue form of dialogue for stimulating, active participation. Here, the small centers in particular are to be encouraged and supported to participate. After the project, the material will be used with publicity. In this way, the Eastern European centers and the mother and family centers in the newly established international MINE network are sustainably strengthened and actively involved. Making care and care work visible around the world in an ideal and material way is to serve as a central and unifying guiding theme of the network in the two-year period of the project. For this purpose, a joint publication, the storytelling project, is to be prepared digitally with videos in virtual walks and made accessible.

The future-oriented goal of the MINE network is to take up the quality standards of the “Grassroots Women’s International Academy” (GWIA) and the claim to best social practice (MINE was the winner of the UN Dubai Prize 2006 “for the best practices to improve the living Environment ”) to be fair again.
We strive to continue the exchange of knowledge in the form of a “MINE Academy” by expanding digital competence expansion and implementing targeted webinars, which can be implemented both digitally and analogously in the Danube region and internationally accessible.

We had an amazing online event, celebrating the International Mother Centers’ Day on through Care on 10. October 2022. If you could not join it, watch the recordings!

What makes the success and uniqueness of the mother centers?

How can mother centers contribute to a more resilient and prosperous development by supporting mothers and families at local, regional, and worldwide levels?

Who we met?

Countries: Slovenia, Slovakia, Netherland, Germany, Czech Republic, Hungary, Italy, Bulgaria, Serbia.
Organizations:

  • Association Mother Center Alternative
  • Association MotherNature-Anyatermeszet, Hungary
  • Centar za majke Aurora-mine
  • Familien- und Mütterzentrum Eichenau, Germany
  • Family Center Mala Ulica, Slovenia, (Javni zavod Mala ulica – center za otroke in družine v Ljubljani in Slovene)
  • Marcin Tsentır – İsperıh
  • MC Dupajda
  • MIZ Miteinander im Zentrum e. V., Aschaffenburg
  • Mütter-Väter-Zentrum Neuhausen e. V.  Landshuter Allee 37, 80637 Munich
  • Nest! foundation & 3 Generatiecentrum Utrecht  Netherlands
  • Netzwerk der Eltern-Kind-Zentren Südtirols
  • Organisation: Kormidlo.  Place: Slovak republic, town Poltar
  • Rodinné centrum Malíček
  • Síť pro rodinu, z.s.
  • Sociaty of Holdam, Miskolc
  • The Union of Maternity Center, Slovakia
  • Únia materských centier/ MC Nezábudka Žilina, Slovakia
  • Union of Mother centres Slovakia