village people

WORDS

spiritual healing but I had the financial ability to access lots of things you can’t access on the NHS so I was lucky.

“Unfortunately money is really key to access these services, and even therapy can be expensive.

“It’s so important we look after ourselves, but that puts so much onus on parents as their responsibility.

“I think it’s also the responsibility of the community to help them to be able to access this help.”

The idea behind the Village was born in summer 2020 with the aim to provide an accessible environment to nurture and inspire parents and carers locally.

Above: a walk and talk in Ladywell Fields

Left: Yasmin Poyntz the need for something of this calibre. She says: “I set up an Instagram account and it was shared everywhere. Within a couple of months we had a team and started in lockdown.

“A lot of new parents hadn’t been able to meet anyone, so we started walks. We did walk and talks throughout the borough and they were really popular as there was no other way to meet people. It was actually such a lifesaver for so many at that point, and we built a community way quicker than anticipated.”

The project still runs the walk and talk sessions, which start at 10.30am every Monday in Ladywell Fields and Thursday in Mountsfield Park.

Yasmin says: “We found out what the needs were in the community, and when we were able to, we started offering breastfeeding support and physiotherapy, which is difficult to get on the NHS.

“We offered support groups and just started adding services that parents were saying they needed.”

The Village has been an invaluable presence to many local parents, most of whom were impacted not only by becoming first-time parents but also by having a baby in a pandemic.

According to a survey the Village carried out of 70 local parents, 43% said they struggled with their mental health, 30% with stress and 53% with loneliness.

Since launching, the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive.

“If you’re a parent who is trying to raise a child while trying to resolve your own emotional issues and not pass it down and change the trajectory for your child, it’s pretty hard work without unbelievable amounts of support. It’s especially hard when you have to also focus on paying the bills.

“Unless you make conscious changes later on, what happens in your early years can really affect everything throughout your whole life, from your financial status to your health. It sets up your trajectory.”

In 2017 Yasmin had her son Lennox. She says: “I felt in a really good place at that point. I’d got into holistic therapies, like yoga, meditation and

Former account manager Yasmin says: “My stepdad had died the year before, and that year I quit my job. I focused on being a full-time parent and my wellbeing for a time, then in the first lockdown I signed up to a six-week life-coaching course with my sister.

“One of the exercises was to rate all the different areas of your life from one to 10, and my career was the area I decided to focus on.

“We had to think about what our ideal day or week looked like, and I just wrote and wrote, and didn’t stop. I put on paper all the ideas I’d had throughout my life and at the end I realised what it was I wanted to do.”

The Village was set up in the midst of lockdown, and while that hindered a lot of businesses and community groups, it just highlighted to Yasmin

Yasmin says: “People have said it’s a non-judgemental, safe space that provides endless support, and I am really proud.

“It’s not just us giving though, it’s reciprocal and I get a lot of support back too. It goes both ways and there are always so many honest, meaningful conversations happening.”

Now, Yasmin is appealing for local philanthropists to get in touch as she builds a stronger team to enable the project to grow, and says: “We’d love to have our own venue, and the aim is to run five days a week.

“We need to scale up to break even, and there’s a lot of free hours going into it at the moment. We’ve proven the business model, we’ve proven there’s a need, but we just need to get the perfect team to scale it up, and then get the venue – and then it’s happy days!”