It’s Spotlight Wednesday! Today I had the pleasure to talk to Michelle, the Founder of Children With Voices.
Children With Voices is a charity aimed at giving the same opportunities to children from unprivileged backgrounds.
Michelle knows first hand how it is to receive no support for kids that needed it, she felt the gap in the care that the system was giving, her kids, and kids like hers were all doomed to have no healthy alternative to the school meals, school also no longer had PE incorporated and obligatory, therefore children from unprivileged backgrounds had difficulties leading a healthy lifestyle.
She started working to combat children obesity.
At the same time, her daughter was being bullied by kids and the school wasn’t acting on it or listening to her, and like her many parents and kids were in the same situation.
She started supporting parents that have no voices.
As a mum of special need kids, she had to navigate through school with no support, her children, and children like hers are still being mistreated.
She started supporting and advocating for children with special needs to get the support they need.
Michelle is fighting for her children and her community through food education, sports and more.
And this is why she founded Children With Voices.
After so many years providing for children and fighting the system Michelle has very little hope left. As a parent, she says, you continue to fight no matter what. But you also are at risk of becoming complacent as there is no funding and the services are slowly dying out. She sees pain and suffering both from the children and the parents.
The process of setting up CWV has been hard. But she also received a lot of support from her family and other organisations that recognised the worth in what she is doing.
Michelle is doing this for many reasons, and one of them is to leave something for the next generation.
There have been many challenges, firstly as a woman of colour, then the council has been unhelpful by referring more and more people to her while not providing any monetary support and therefore, she has no capacity for the people that keep getting referred to her.
She is also slowly loosing volunteers as she is not able to look after them and therefore, it is becoming difficult to provide for clients.
It is also getting more difficult to get core fundings to support the paid members of staff.
Lastly, but not least, a lot of community spaces have been closing down so it has been a challenge to keep finding spaces from where to deliver her support.
Since joining Hackney Impact Michelle has received several coaching sessions with Paul, which are insightful and useful, she is also connecting with people through Caroline, her mentor. She was able to find a space where things get resolved quickly and where there is trust between the coach, mentor and her.
Hackney Impact is a place where the work behind the person is appreciated.
She wants people to know that there is no word as ‘I can’t’. You can make it work if you want to. And as a mother she feels the responsibility to leave a legacy for her kids.
We have a responsibility towards our kids, and we need to get together as a community, we need to create a community and face issues together.
We need to believe in a dream together.
This is all from me today,
See you next week.
B.
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