Happy New Year and 2021 - a Mamahood Year in Review
If you’re reading this, you must have been a part of The Mamahood community in 2021 in some way!
Maybe you are a member of one of our many Facebook groups.
Maybe you’re an entrepreneur in The Club, our sister organization for makers, doers, Founders and business owners of all kinds.
Maybe you’re an organization who partnered with us to bring something special to our members.
Whatever role you played, we’re grateful for you.
Our community wouldn’t exist without our members or business partners.
Because of you, this year:
- We grew! We launched a brand new chapter of The Mamahood for Sacramento Valley! And in the The Mamahood - SF Bay Area, we served more than 50,000 moms through 40+ various support groups, co-moderated by volunteers and experts from The Club.
- In our Giving Circle group, we created a space for thousands of moms to help out other moms via the gifting and swapping of free items, food, and funds. Through community generosity, moms found things they needed, warm meals, shelter, and raised funds during crises.
- We founded a task force of volunteers called the DV Freedom Team to help advocate for moms escaping domestic violence situations by rallying community support on their behalf and helping behind the scenes with logistics and moral support. Many members of our team once escaped DV themselves - some with the help and support of our community. One survivor mama was so inspired to give back to The Mamahood that she founded our partner nonprofit organization, Monarch Mama, which raises funds for DV survivors by selling gently used baby clothing and items.
- The Giving Circle also hosted another successful Mamahood Holiday Gift Drive! With a team of core committee members, Tiffany Gephart, Cesyli Gaut, Sarah Dawson, and Anna Marquez, and contributions from over 100 Mamahood members, we used the registry platform DreamList (and the help of its Founder, Club member Diana Zink) to bring gifts to close to 300 children! <3
- With the help of Attuned Living’s social justice and allyship workshops, we offered specialized training to our Mamahood moderators on handling conversations around racism using nonviolent communication techniques. The workshops were taught in part by the incredible speaker, author, and yoga priestess, Clubber Itzel Hayward, Founder of Attuned Living.
- We launched 17 more moms on their journeys to becoming published authors in 2021 with the aid of Tiny Book Course! (We helped 12 moms become authors in 2020 - including yours truly! We’ll be writing books together again in Fall 2022….Wait list is already open and ready for you - just hit me up!
On that note, thank you so much to everyone who checked out my debut memoir, Liar Liar Heart on Fire. And if you haven’t, please do! Every download is thrilling and so appreciated. It helps to know people are reading, because even though I love it, I find writing in a vacuum to be so hard! Working on the prequel now! xox
- Speaking of books, we cheered on Emily Autenrieth, the admin of our IEP Support group as she launched a community-centered, social-justice-forward bookstore in Elk Grove called A Seat at the Table.
- We paid our first paychecks to two moms who were thereby able to work from home and support their families.
- We used Ujama to create a digital member roster, group people by city, and enable side-hustlers a way to transact with the community!
- Mamahoodies put their heads together to come up with some fun new search tags for Clubber Jennifer Whyte’s app, MomieGo. MomieGo helps parents find their next BFF by matching on things other than the age of one's kids, things like interests or traits. We added: 90’s R&B, Salsa Dancing, True Crime, Tattoos, F Bomb, Board Games, Escape Rooms, Stock Market. Nerdy. Bilingual, Bicultural, Alcohol Free, Granola, Fabulous, Goofy, Socially Awkward, etc.
- We partnered with Clubber Gretchen Salyer’s startup called June Care to help moms offer childcare to each other. It’s like paid playdates - and we think it’s pretty awesome! Here’s a local write-up explaining more about it.
- We helped Lindsay Wildlife survive their Covid shutdown phase and re-open doors by having our families attend various virtual wildlife events. Now they’ve restarted their daily programming and guided family hikes for ages 6+.
- We supported shopping local by connecting our moms to Bay Area artisans, vendors, makers, and Farmers Markets via weekly features and giveaways on Soko, The Farmers’ Market app.
- We connected kids to the arts by aiding in the grand openings of both the School of Rock in Walnut Creek and the I Can Do That Performing Arts Center in Danville, co-founded by Clubber Shayna Ronen! Particularly exciting was helping ICDT launch their first programming for homeschoolers. We also helped celebrate (and sell out!) the launch of Camp Shine, a special place created by Clubber Stephanie Telfer, that combines social and emotional wellbeing, nature and arts.
- We partnered with Clubber Sara Rich’s company Just Right Reader, a provider of accredited online teachers and resources, to provide free reading assessments to 199 children ages 4-11 - and counting! You can still sign up here! There’s no obligation to purchase anything - but if you do, use our code MAMAHOOD for 50% off your first month of either tutoring or reading boxes. (Their best deal!)
- We continued gathering singing moms for our Empathy Anthem Project and will have a few more recordings up here soon!
- We launched a new site for The Club and brought 50 new business owners into our community during our annual membership drive this past February. We’ll be kicking off monthly curated 1-1 introductions and onboarding new members again in the New Year!
- We made all of this happen via the donated time and energy of over 40 group moderators, The Mamahood Marketing team, and the ever-uplifting energy, love, good vibes and community participation of our mom members.
So we thank each of you for being part of our community; we could not have done any of this without you.
Happy holidays to everyone in The Mamahood!
We’re wishing you all the greatest peace, joy, inspiration, and success in the New Year.
-Heather and The Mamahood Team
PS. If you’d like to receive our Mamahood highlights, we’ll be sending out favorite news from the community in 2022. You can sign up via email, text or both! (They’ll differ slightly in content, but the most important info will go out to both channels.)
PPS. Here’s a chill playlist for concentrating while laptopping from home amidst children, if that’s you! (It’s definitely me!)