Amma Birth Companions offers specialist support to refugee, asylum-seeking and migrant mothers and parents in Glasgow who often struggle to access vital support services due to language barriers and serious adversity.
I have been volunteering with refugee, asylum-seeking and migrant communities for around two years to help them to improve their English skills. Running an event with the language exchange, I met a member of Amma staff at Refugee Festival Scotland in June and offered to facilitate a language exchange at Amma. We came together on 30 October to share experiences, language around motherhood and parenthood and give voice to those in our communities who are not always heard.
We started by discussing motherhood and parenthood including some of the challenges of being a parent outside of your country of origin. We then discussed the language of motherhood and parenthood such as ‘midwife’ ‘water birth’ and ‘formula’. Many of the participants discovered that there were words in their own languages they had been substituting with English due to having their primary experiences of motherhood and parenthood take place in Scotland. It was an honour to create space for participants to reconnect with their native language environments and communication styles.
We had participants from various language communities such as Kurdish, Tigrinya, Farsi, Urdu, Yoruba and Arabic. Whilst learning new words in English, I invited participants to share their experiences in their native languages. This helped them to feel listened to even if they could not be understood by everyone.
We had participants teaching each other words in their native languages and helping them with understanding English words, even when not from the same language community. Participants also found surprising similarities between their own languages and others.
One of the volunteers that day was an interpreter – people in the translation industry often enjoy meeting new people
I was honoured to be welcomed to the space and enjoyed the liveliness of the language exchange with children playing and being cared for simultaneously. Mothers and parents were supported in caring for their children with babies being held and supervised by staff volunteers. Staff at Amma do incredible work and the appreciation for it can be felt. I would also like to thank them for all their support with the language exchange!
I learnt a lot from listening to the mothers and parents at Amma and look forward to the opportunity to share more experiences together.
We at Global Connects take on a range of volunteering activities to support our local communities – from Kilt Walks to regular volunteering with local communities. If you have an event that would benefit from the help of Global Connects staff, please do contact us and we will see how we can get involved!