Embrace is a national movement that promotes a connected and thriving start to motherhood for every new mother in South Africa. Its vision is based on the understanding that an empowered and embraced mother raises a thriving child. To this end, the movement aims to create a powerful network of mothers who support and advocate for each other and who feel valued, confident and positive about raising their children.

Embrace’s mission is to tackle some of the structural and social dynamics that shape the experience of early motherhood.

“Exhaustion does not discriminate, post-natal depression does not discriminate. Every mother remembers how they felt when they first held their child.”
Julie Mentor, Embrace Movement Leader

While all mothers have a powerful role to play in the growth of the network, Embrace focuses on issues and celebrations that pertain to mothering during the first 1 000 days of life i.e. the period between conception and a child’s second birthday. This is because the first 1 000 days is the most significant period in a child’s life, when their brain develops more rapidly than at any other point in their life.^[1]Cusick, S and Georgieff, MK. The first 1 000 days of life: The brain’s window of opportunity. Unicef: Office of Research: Innocenti. Access here. The cognitive, motor and social skills developed in this period are what lay the foundations for lifelong learning, health and behaviour, making it a critical window of opportunity for nurturing a child’s chances of success later in life. And one of the key ways of laying these foundations in infants and small children is through stable, responsive relationships with caring adults.^[2]Serve and return. Centre on the Developing Child, Harvard University. Available here

The transition into parenthood is a vulnerable time for women. Between 9% and 21% of new mothers experience depression during pregnancy or after the birth of their baby, and it has been shown that a mother’s mental health can negatively affect the development of her child^[3]McLeish, J. & Redshaw, M. 2017. Mothers’ accounts of the impact on emotional wellbeing of organised peer support in pregnancy and early parenthood: a qualitative study. BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth, 17:28. Access here.. Support from others can help to lower feelings of depression and anxiety in a new mom by boosting her sense of self-esteem and competence as a parent, and by making her feel less isolated^[4]Ibid.. Such support has also been shown to reduce preterm births^[5]Ickovics, J. R., Kershaw, T.S., Westdahl, C., Magriples, U. Massey, Z., Reynolds, H. & Rising, S. S. 2007. Group Prenatal Care and Perinatal Outcomes: A randomized trial. Obstet Gynecol, 110(2 PT 1): 333-339. Access here. , and to increase the length of time women breastfeed, as well as the length of time they breastfeed without introducing any other types of liquids or foods^[6]Renfrew, M. J., McCormick, F.M., Wade, A., Quinn, B., & Dowswell, T. 2012. Support for Breastfeeding mothers. Access here.. Given that in South Africa, 27% of children under five years of age are nutritionally stunted^[7]Said-Mohamed, R., Micklesfield, L., Pettifor, J., & Norris, S. 2015. Has the prevalence of stunting in South African children changed in 40 years? A systematic review. BMC Public Health 15(1):1-10., supporting new mothers is an important strategy to strengthen human capital development in the country.

To reduce the vulnerability of small children, more than just services and programmes are required – a societal response is needed. Once mothers and babies leave their post-natal clinic checks at six weeks of age, they only visit health services for vaccinations or when they or their babies are sick. It’s therefore vital that mothers are acknowledged and supported in their roles as the number-one champion for their children during their early formative years. Everyday interactions with a caring adult are also vital for developing resilience in children. As American psychologist Ann Masten has pointed out, resilience does not come from rare and special qualities, but from the everyday magic of ordinary, normative human resources in the minds, brains, and bodies of children, in their families and relationships, and in their communities.”^[8]Masten, S. 2001. Ordinary Magic: Resilience Processes in Development. American Psychologist Vol 56, No.3. Available here. It grows from being loved.

It is for this reason that Embrace has adopted a people-driven approach to supporting mothers as the primary ‘simple, loving connection’ in their children’s life. Irrespective of their backgrounds, all mothers have the power to lay the foundations that will powerfully impact the potential of her children to succeed in life.

“Motherhood is something that should matter to all of us, not just to individual mothers. Embrace holds society to account for the lack of real social structures of support and services offered to mothers.”
Rumbi Goredema Görgens, Embrace Operations Manager

Embrace’s strategy is focused on tapping into the thousands of shared experiences around motherhood – and allowing these to drive a movement through which mothers experience societal, collective, and interpersonal support.

Connecting

Driven by the Embrace Hub – a team of passionate and skilled mothers – Embrace actively seeks opportunities for individual and group action that can be turned into opportunities for sustained engagement and interpersonal connection between mothers. The network is rooted in the shared identity of motherhood, and Embrace positions itself at the grassroots level to realise its vision of an ‘Embraced Mother’ through interconnectedness.  An ‘Embraced mother’ has:

• A compassionate and caring birth experience
• Confidence in herself and her body
• A trusted and caring community of people around her
• An easy re-entry into the workplace
• Many opportunities to play with and enjoy her child
• The knowledge and ability to advocate for her child.

Inspiring

While Embrace hopes to reduce child vulnerability, it firmly believes that – first and foremost – motherhood needs to be supported for the sake of it. It also hopes to elevate the social status of motherhood to one that all South African mothers can connect to. When mothers believe that the identity of motherhood is shared – no matter how different people are – it allows for honest sharing of good and bad experiences that draw people together in a safe space, where deep listening can take place and empathy is cultivated.

Relying heavily on the sharing of social capital^[9]Social capital includes everything that people share through networks to add advantage to others, such as information, mobility, time, money and useful items, expertise, experience, skills, acceptance, support, etc. within the network to increase the resilience of new mothers, children and families, Embrace is of course continually confronted by the inequality in South Africa and resultant power imbalances between mothers in the network. To address this, Embrace redefines the value that people put to certain types of capital, showing for example how material donations are not worth more than less concrete forms of capital such as moms being able to speak to hospital staff in their mother tongue. The movement is guided by a ‘Motherhood Manifesto’ – a set of 13 principles inspired by the words of mothers from different communities, races, cultures and socio-economic statuses across South Africa that underlie how members of the Embrace network relate to one another:

Embrace has developed a network of about 2 000 women across eight provinces and forms part of the Nurturing Care Framework in the Western Cape Department of Health. In 2020 Embrace coordinated the local identification and support of 5 000 pregnant women with ante-natal support and food vouchers across Khayelitsha, Gugulethu, Nyanga, Hanover Park, Manenberg and Bontehuewel in partnership with Violence Prevention through Urban Upgrading Programme (VPUU) and Grow Great (A campaign seeking to mobilise South Africa towards a national commitment to zero stunting by 2030).^[10]Source: DGMT 2020 Annual Report, pg 44. network and nurturing care framework info is repeated in DGMT 2019 Annual Report, pg 29

Mother’s Day Connect is a prime example of Embrace’s strategy of turning moments of mobilisation into opportunities for sustained engagement and interpersonal connection. A simple and spontaneous idea initially meant to visit new mothers at Karl Bremer Hospital on Mother’s Day quickly grew to 100 women visiting 490 new mothers at 12 Cape Town hospitals in 2016, and approximately 450 women visiting 1 500 new mothers in six cities in South Africa in 2017. Mother’s Day Connect 2018 exceeded all expectations, expanding from four to eight provinces and adding 12 new cities to its reach. Approximately 3 000 new moms were visited, with women sharing stories of continued support and innovative ideas across the network long after Mother’s Day ended. In 2019, these figures were exceeded again. 70 teams of women in 8 provinces visited 4500 new mothers and 2000 nursing and support staff to encourage, celebrate and support them.

“I would like to thank you most sincerely for your Mother’s Day Connect visit to our maternity units. I cannot tell you what an impact you and your team made on our patients and our staff. We received a report from Sr. Tholekele who accompanied you on the day describing the excitement and joy you brought to the patients and the nursing staff on Mother’s Day. The attention to detail, the generous gift bags and the lovely cupcakes and muffins were all hugely appreciated. It was particularly highlighted the sensitivity shown by your team members to our bereaved moms who lost their babies in childbirth. Thank you so much for bringing a lot of Mother’s Day solace and happiness into our hospital.”
Elaine Hussey, Charlotte Maxeke

In 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic, Embrace started Messages for Mothers (M4M) to keep mothers informed, connected and encouraged using digital channels.

In 2019 Embrace launched the Mamandla Fellowship, an opportunity to harness the collective efforts of its work and passions for the good of all mothers, and to leverage the power of diverse experiences through a network of relationships.