Current Projects

Parenting Room, School Of Arts Building, Edith Street
Our group began lobbying council for a clean safe place for parents to feed in 2007.Prior to this agreement with council some important steps were taken. On the 12 March, 2007 at the final council meeting for the Johnstone Shire Council, Mothers Helping Others working with Mr Graham Webb the administrator at the time, created a charter for an inclusive community which recognises the rights and needs of all members of our community including:
Infants
Lactating women
Women with more than one child under 5
Disabled and
The elderly
This was a major landmark in the fight for equality for women and children at a local level. The ongoing issue of substandard parenting facilities has finally been addressed properly in a change to the Council Charter on development and town planning that many, many local women have been calling for, over the past 5 years.
Mothers Helping Others will continue working with the community, local council and the local businesses to provide parenting facilities and a clean safe place for parents to feed in 2009.
We can happily report that we will have a designated parenting room in Innisfail in the School of the Arts Building which will provide parents with feeding and changing facitilities in the inner CBD. At this moment fundraising has begun in the form of our Girls Night Out Shopping Spectacular on 29th August to properly furnish the room by its opening date October 2009. We thank the Cassowary Regional Council for being joint partners in this project.
Books for Bubs
Another recent project was Books for Bubs. This projects involves presenting each new baby born at the Innisfail hospital from June 2008—June 2009 with a book pack containing parenting DVD’s, 3 books and a custom made informative leaflet providing information about local parenting support, playgroup locations, helpline numbers and other practical information.
Reading together can be such a beautiful experience, an opportunity to cuddle up close and discover new worlds, to learn, to talk, to interact. It’s a quiet moment in a busy day, a breath of fresh air. It can be used to soothe babies before bed, or to help wake them up in the morning or to change the mood when they’re sad. On many, many levels, reading is an important part of early childhood and the creative, social and emotional development of children.
Through this project we are also promoting literacy, a love of reading that we hope will last throughout their lives, and giving children a range of pre-reading skills such as knowing when to turn the page and reading from left to right and ultimately giving these children a sound beginning for when they start school.
Reading is beneficial for all children but sadly in many homes there are no books. A recent survey of families in the Cairns area found that up to 80% did not have any reading material at all in their home and therefore parents were never reading with their children. These are the families we hope to reach most of all with this project.
A committee of local community representatives was formed to select the resources which were included in each ‘Books for Bubs’ pack. The members of the committee are Debbie Mitchell head of maternity at the Innisfail Hospital, Cherrie Meyer a councillor at the Innisfail Community Support Centre, Santina Keenan Early Childhood Teacher, Alexis Adams Librarian of the Innisfail Library, Gaylene Whenmouth from Ergon Energy and Mothers Helping Others representatives Peace Mitchell, Katy Garner, Fawn Meyer, Melanie Worth and Shay Webster.