The mothers behind the teen moms at the Women’s Centre

“THE most beautiful thing about my job is that I get the chance to help influence at least one young mother to be a good mother to her baby,” quipped a jovial Victoria Powell, day care assistant at the Women’s Centre of Jamaica Foundation (WCJF), Kingston Centre.

Powell started out working at the foundation as a cleaner, but quickly became day care assistant which sees her providing care for the babies of adolescent mothers while they receive academic instruction.

“Although my job mainly is to care for the babies, for example, keeping them clean and dry and keeping their environment clean, sometimes I help the girls too,” explained Powell. “Remember that the girls are young, so some of them really don’t know how to hold their babies properly to breastfeed. We [day care assistants] have to show them. We make sure that the baby latches on to the breast correctly. And we also see to it that mommy burps the baby before placing him back in the crib,” she said.

Miss Annie, as she is affectionately called by her colleagues and students, has been working at the WCJF for 22 years and views her job as her way of giving back to her country.

“When some of the girls come here, they are very aggressive. But because we receive continuous training, we know how to interact with them and in a couple of weeks, when you see a change in their behaviour and attitude I feel good knowing that I did something positive to contribute to the future of Jamaica,” she expressed.

Meanwhile, at the Montego Bay Centre, assistant pre-school teacher Rosemarie Edwards, who has worked at the foundation since 1997, shared similar sentiments.

“I love my job. I would not change it for anything,” she shared. “Sometimes I am on the road or go to a business place and I hear, ‘Miss Edwards, you remember me? I am so and so from the Women’s Centre’. That makes me feel good, it gives me the drive to continue to show them love,” she beamed.

A mother of two boys, Edwards said she treats the adolescent mothers and their children as if they are her own.

“I pray for them and ask the Lord to cover them and their children. Every opportunity I get, I encourage the mothers to read to their babies and expose them to a good education from early as education can take them very far,” Edwards related.

The WCJF is a public body within the gender portfolio of the Ministry of Culture, Gender, Entertainment and Sport. The foundation provides a safe space for adolescent females to continue their education after dropping out of school due to pregnancy. At the WCJF, parenting forms part of the syllabus, in addition to the traditional school curriculum.

“In partnership with UNICEF, we have strengthened the delivery of the parenting programme which aims to equip the adolescent mothers with skills needed to parent their children,” explained executive director Dr Zoe Simpson.

The parenting programme encourages the young mothers to create for their children an environment that fosters early stimulation, healthy parent-child interaction, and communication.

There are two specific sessions in the parenting programme on ‘Helping your Child to Behave’. The sessions, which focus on positive disciplinary techniques, aim to reduce the risk of violence to children in the home. Since the inception of the WCJF in 1978, the entity has helped more than 50,000 adolescent mothers become transformational mothers to their children.