What started as a chance meeting in a playground has led to a unique alliance bringing together mums from Wythenshawe, Manchester and 11 different countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
A group of ladies representing Mums Mart, based at Brownley Green Methodist Church in Wythenshawe, have just returned from a fact-finding visit to Nairobi armed with ideas to benefit their local community.
They were guests of international people’s organisation Slum/Shack Dwellers International (SDI) which represents member federations of urban poor and homeless groups.
Sharon Davis, whose husband Greg runs United Estates of Wythenshawe (UEW), the UK’s first Inner City Culture Centre, led the Manchester delegation made up of eight mums from Greater Manchester.
It was Greg who met a distraught single mum in a school playground six years ago. She had no money, mounting debts, her kids were being bullied and the only adult conversations she had were at the school gates.
Greg took her back to the UEW building and introduced her to Sharon and some other mums with similar stories.
They started getting together regularly and came up with the idea of holding markets to raise money to take families away on trips. Mums Mart was born.
In 2016, inspired by the work of SDI they adapted the idea of launching their own Community Savers scheme. Sharon set up a bank account and agreed to be treasurer handling all the deposits and withdrawals for members.
Community Savers is a network of women-led savings schemes linking up residents in Greater Manchester and Yorkshire to share ideas, experiences and strategies for reducing poverty in neighbourhoods, towns and cities.
At Mums Mart, alongside weekly savings meetings and monthly markets, they are continuously looking for future inspiration. The visits to SDI projects are critical in helping them generate ideas and support and to exchange personal experiences.
Said Sharon: “The work of SDI is so important and impactful and properly demonstrates the power of people working together to bring about change and make a difference in their local community.
“The mutual co-operation between us and SDI means we can share ideas, see what works and what doesn’t work, and how we can just generally improve lives.”
Mums Mart is currently working with local Wythenshawe residents to find ways to co-finance the renovation of an old caretakers apartment at UEW into a women-friendly free meeting and advice space. They run a new food membership club Local Fresh Food Co-operative, and bring residents together to identify shared priorities in the area.
