As we approach the 15th anniversary of our organization, I wanted to take a moment to express gratitude.
Thank you to all the mamas, the volunteers, our admin team, our board of directors, the Downtown Community Center, and all our educational and community partners who make this group a wonderful one.
Whether you are new to HRP Mamas, or have been here since 2004, it’s thanks to every single one of you that this group is able to serve as a support system.
These past 12 months have been packed with group events and activities, workshops, and speaker events, here is a snapshot of the past months and what we look forward to doing more of in our 15th year!
We held our 5th Annual Early Education Fair in September 2018.Over 30 schools were present and hundreds of parents attended.Our 6th annual fair will be announced soon and will also be in mid September 2019.
We hosted 14 speaker events with authors and experts on a whole gamut of parenting topics.
There were 22 separate parenting workshops on topics ranging from pelvic health, car seat safety, nutrition for children, sleep strategies, and returning to work.
We offered 9 separate series of educator led, five week long, HRP Mamas New Mom Support Groups.
We launched an additional free monthly breastfeeding support group with breastfeeding experts present to answer questions.
In addition to our co-sponsored La Leche League monthly breastfeeding support group at Playgarden.
Also weekly in 0-18 month subgroups, weekly lunches and social events at partner venues.
We started our first guided parent/toddler playgroup to help parents with 12-27 month olds connect to each other and get guidance in a preschool setting from experts in early education - more to come of these with various providers - stay tuned!
Most importantly, a multitude (too many to count) of playgroups, book groups, picnics, mom night outs, classes and meet-ups were set-up by volunteer mamas on the HRP Mamas subgroups. Amazing, generous, mamas who took their desire to connect with other mamas and put it forward for all in their subgroup to enjoy.
Thank you to: Ami, Sophie, Elisa, Marissa, Jazz, Jewel, Tracy, Mary-Elizabeth, Ash, Nicole, Chloe, Megan, Olivia, Lindsey, Nicole, Elizabeth, Raquel, Sarah, Brooke, Amity, Cristina, Megan, Francesca, Julie, Rebecca, Emily, Christie, Marinna, Kristen, Jenna, Daniela, Sarah, Dana, Simona, Tracie, Christina, Courtney, Taylor, Becky, Alison, Kristina, Roya, Clarice, Whitney, Laurie, Michelle, Susie, Christie, Holly, Lana, Suzie, Cassie, Chaya, Jennifer, Dale, Karen, Elissa, Clare, Ali, Noor, Nicola, Jennifer, Blaga, Paige, Debbie, Kanan, Linda, Anna, Jubilee, Evanna, Christie, Elizabeth, Kendall, Cecilia, Stefanie, Julie, Eliza, Megan, Juliet. I am sure I forgot someone 😬 but please know that your generosity in offering your time to help mamas meet-up is very much appreciated by ALL.
A special thank you to Vicki in our single mamas subgroup who is simply amazing and has set-up monthly meet-ups for the mamas in that subgroup. Vicki - Thank you! 🙏
A sincere thank you to all of our volunteer mamas and thank you to Sunita for helping mamas coordinate their events, for offering guidance, cross posting, and helping channel the many efforts so that mamas can have fun meet-ups.
We started a subgroup for mamas with Dogs! Cutest #intro posts ever, besides the many baby pictures shared on the 0-12 subgroups of course :) (Cat group anyone?)
Several new subgroups were started including our LGBQTMamas subgroup. Happy PRIDE! 🌈❤️🧡💛💚💙💜
We have a group of HRP Mamas transplants in Los Angeles meeting up regularly to stay connected to their NY roots.
Thank you Lindsay for your volunteer efforts!
Career support subgroups have had meet-ups to network with those in similar fields.
Thank you to all the volunteer mamas in those groups too!
And thank you for all the mamas who sent in their listings for the HRP Mamas Perks page and provider/service directory. We look forward to updating those and supporting our mamas by both offering more HRP Mamas perks and further supporting local.
Our admins met this past year with 100’s of new members to serve as their reference, and 100’s of mamas also served as references for new applicants.Our immense gratitude to all who help us maintain the integrity of this system by emailing us back your verification for new applicants, and taking time to give us feedback. We appreciate your many kind words 💜.
A special thank you to the mamas who got in touch offline to provide constructive feedback. It has helped us make improvements where needed and we are grateful for it!
We’ve had thousands of group posts on our advice & discussion group, classifieds and all the various subgroups on our online community.
The compassionate, supportive, non-judgmental tone of posts in our group has grown a year older – and remained true to the HRP Mamas spirit. Thank you ALL for that!
Hundreds of posts via anonymous post editor have been posted and replied to when mamas had sensitive queries they needed help with.
Admins have connected offline with mamas to help pass on replies, to aggregate replies for summaries, and to help connect mamas to resources where needed.
New hashtags and new ways of sorting through posts in a more time efficient manner + lots of other technical updates including DM’s in our subgroup directories, event features, and too much to list - and more exciting stuff to come!
Our team is working on new things for the coming 15th year of HRP Mamas!
We hope that in 2019/20 we can provide and facilitate all of the above plus more!
Thank you all!
Anna
HRP Mamas