The toy blocks building trust, love and understanding

There’s a beautiful kind of hospitality, and this is it.

Belle Tindall

Belle is the staff writer at Seen & Unseen.

A baby plays with wooden toys on a carpert.

Photo by Troy T on Unsplash.

The leftovers were being gathered up, chairs being put back in their place, and happy looking people were dispersing. The last child there, his mum helping to wrap things up in the kitchen, was clinging onto a toy that I, in my imagination, like to think he makes a B-line for every time he spots it. It was an ordinary scene, but there was something undeniably extraordinary underpinning it.

Although it’s hard to articulate with words (which is admittedly not ideal when the objective of the visit was to write about it), it was immediately clear to me, I had walked right into the aftermath of something truly special. I sat down with Joey and Sarah, two of the Growbaby team, to figure out what it was.

Growbaby is an international children’s supply charity, providing clothing, equipment and everyday essentials for children up to five years old. Launched in 2003 and rooted in a local Vineyard church in Kingston Upon Thames, there are now multiple Growbaby hubs, one of which just happens to be at the end of my road in Cardiff. What started as a cupboard crammed with donated supplies is now a source of wholistic support for over one hundred families.

As requests flow into Growbaby HQ, packages are lovingly compiled and then freely given. These packages are put together on a case-by-case basis and can include anything from nappies to pushchairs, clothes to cots, formula to toys. Such support doesn’t tend to be offered from a distance, on the contrary, every Friday morning families (mothers and little ones, primarily) are welcomed to ‘stay and play’, and to subsequently receive the kind of support that can’t be handed over via a package. The aftermath of one of these events was the context for my short but ever so sweet visit.

The ways in which Joey and Sarah find themselves serving these families is constantly bursting the banks of their expectations.

The depth of relationship that has naturally built through their time together, with every Friday morning acting as a building block of trust, has meant that the ways in which Joey and Sarah find themselves serving these families is constantly bursting the banks of their expectations. The team have assisted in getting families set up with child credits and social services support, frequently acted as translators, ferried families to A&E, thrown baby showers, booked GP appointments, been birth partners, and even sought out affordable kitchen flooring on Facebook Marketplace.

Working for the well-being of these families has also involved appealing to the Red Cross to try and re-unite a Sudanese mother with her twelve-year-old son who has been unable to get out of the war-torn country. With families from Syria, Sudan, Iran, Iraq and Somalia (to name but a few), many of whom have found themselves in Cardiff as refugees, Growbaby is far more than a resource centre, it is a beautifully diverse community, the most understanding of support networks, a means of building a home away from home.

When Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine last year, the Growbaby team’s minds immediately went to the Russian women within their community, those who had brought their families to the UK in search of political asylum. These women had built a home for themselves and their children here, and yet, the news of the Russian offensive was likely to make them feel as vulnerable as the day they arrived. So, the team gave each of these women a card; a small but mighty gesture that let these women know that they were seen, safe, understood and loved in the place that they now called home.

The team here are also hosting these families’ trauma and their fears, they’re holding space for their joys and their victories.

I was struck by the fact that whole lives have been enhanced in this room; friendships have been forged, babies have been celebrated, all kinds of needs have been provided for, and women who came to Growbaby for help are now the volunteers who offer it. And these stories are a mere scratching of a powerful surface, the beaming smiles on both Joey and Sarah’s faces tell a thousand more. The impact that these women have had could never be adequately squeezed into an article (again, not ideal when an article is the objective).

Stepping foot into the room that Friday morning was stepping foot into the most tangible sense hospitality one could imagine. Of course, there are the obvious, and utterly essential ways, that these families are being hosted – through resources, supplies and practical support. But the team here are also hosting these families’ trauma and their fears, they’re holding space for their joys and their victories. Each person that walks through the door of Cardiff’s Growbaby are finding a community who will welcome and host the whole of them, who will weep with them when they’re weeping, and celebrate with them when they’re celebrating.

It’s a beautiful thing.

We could be forgiven for thinking that this kind of no-strings-attached hospitality is a myth. If it ever did exist, it’s bygone, and therefore dwells only in the realms of nostalgia. So, counter-cultural is it, that we’d be suspicious if ever we were to stumble upon rumours of it.

Well, no suspicion necessary here. It truly does exist; you can take my word for it. And I can’t imagine people more in need of it than parents, the guardians and nurturers of little lives.

If you are in need of the kind of support that Growbaby can offer, you can see if there’s a Grow Baby near you by using its directory .

Article

Change

Community

Development

11 October 2023

6 min read

Tackling homelessness needs much more than promises and policies

While homelessness generates statistics and strategies around the world, Jane Cacouris asks what really is home.

Jane Cacouris

Jane Cacouris is a writer and consultant working in international development on environment, poverty and livelihood issues.

A mother sits with a toddler standing in front of her. The father appears from the side lying on his back reaching an arm out.

A family play in a Rio favela.

“Mummy, are we homeless?” asked our six-year-old as we pulled away in the taxi. We had just eaten a final meal - a KFC family bucket of fried chicken - sitting on a sarong on the floor of our empty apartment in Rio de Janeiro, our home for almost four years.

The question left me momentarily winded. Homeless. A word that instantly conjured up feelings of anxiety and uncertainty, of sands shifting under our feet. Technically, yes, we were. My husband had just left his job in Brazil, and we had two months with nowhere to live before we relocated back to the UK. With no permanent base anywhere in the world, we were about to use the time to travel in South America as a family. Whilst I did feel somewhat insecure, my husband in contrast found it freeing; the first time in his life that he didn’t carry a set of house keys in his pocket. We had nowhere to live, but we were free to go wherever we wanted. And this is where the analogy of us actually being homeless broke down. We had a freedom of choice in a way that the vast majority of people who experience homelessness do not.

World Homeless Day on the 10th October was marked with the recent release of a landmark UN report on global homelessness. The UN define homelessness as:

“where a person or household lacks habitable space with security of tenure, rights, and ability to enjoy social relations, including safety. [It] is a manifestation of extreme poverty and a failure of multiple systems and human rights.”

According to UN-Habitat, a staggering 1.6 billion people in the world are estimated to be in inadequate housing and over 150 million have no housing at all.

Global homelessness has been rising for the past decade, with temporary homelessness being increasingly caused by conflict and climate-induced displacement. However, according to the UN report, Covid-19 exacerbated the issue, deepening existing inequalities and causing already marginalised people to be even more vulnerable.

In developing countries, the informal economy – self-made microentrepreneurs who sell everything from popcorn to shoe polishing - usually sustains the poor urban majority. But with many informal jobs vanishing during lockdowns, and with few assets and limited social safety nets, many urban dwellers were rapidly plunged further into poverty. Women and children suffering from domestic and gender-based violence had to remain in unsafe environments, with abuse escalating during lockdowns and curfews. Issues that encouraged migration and homelessness.

There are approximately 150 million children living and working on the streets worldwide. Almost impossible to imagine, and so the number sometimes doesn’t compute with our hearts.

The extent of homelessness worldwide is notoriously difficult to quantify accurately, partly due to what is known as hidden homelessness. The hidden and isolated nature of children and adolescents living on the street, for example, makes statistics difficult to gather. A 2023 UNICEF report of street children in Dhaka estimated that the number of children living on the street just in Bangladesh could be in the millions. And according to UN sources there are approximately 150 million children living and working on the streets worldwide. Almost impossible to imagine, and so the number sometimes doesn’t compute with our hearts. The true horror of the isolation of child homelessness only truly hit me a few years ago…

The residents in our block had finally had enough of the noise and called the police. They arrived in the middle of the night with their guns and shot at the children who dispersed.

Living at the top of a high-rise block in the middle of an urban neighbourhood in Rio, we were kept awake for a number of nights in a row. It started as a disturbance – children yelling in the street outside that would continue from the early hours until dawn. But as the days went on, the disturbance at night became more acute. One morning as I stepped out of our apartment in the morning, bleary-eyed and irritated, I was confronted by a small group of sleeping children lying huddled together in a row on the pavement next to a tree. Several pairs of bare filthy feet were sticking out of a blanket they were sharing. I looked down at them as I passed – they varied in age from about eight to twelve years old. The youngest was probably younger than my son at the time. He had knotted black curly hair and a streaked face. The next night we heard gun shots and then an eery silence. Another sleepless night, this time from worrying about the children, and then we discovered that the residents in our block had finally had enough of the noise and called the police. They arrived in the middle of the night with their guns and shot at the children who dispersed. The children never came back.

The government pledge to end rough sleeping in England by the end of 2024 is woefully off track.

Although homelessness is an overwhelmingly larger problem in poor countries, it also affects affluent nations, including the United Kingdom. This year the Kerslake Commission, an expert panel set up to scrutinise how rough sleeping is being addressed across England, pointed out that data on rough sleeping in London last year showed a 16 per cent increase in numbers of people sleeping rough. And that almost half (48 per cent) were sleeping rough for the first time. It concluded that the government pledge to end rough sleeping in England by the end of 2024 is woefully off track. According to Crisis, the homelessness system in England is at breaking point and the Homelessness Monitor 2023 reported that the cost-of-living crisis, rising rents and a lack of affordable housing are making it harder for councils to provide homeless people with effective support.

It is about where you feel valued and understood… where you feel loved… and where you want to come back to.

So, the problem of homelessness really is global. And what is the answer? Yes, governments must act; social safety nets and public policies to help alleviate poverty are critical. But even the richest countries with the most advanced governments have never been able to fully tackle this issue. Homelessness and poverty were rife in Biblical times. As Jesus said in the Gospel of John, “‘You will always have the poor with you”. And Jesus himself understands homelessness in a way many of us don’t; he started life in a stable, born to parents who were sleeping rough. He became a baby on the run to flee King Herod, homeless and seeking asylum in Egypt. When Jesus was older, after he was baptised by John the Baptist, he became homeless again, living life on the the road and in the open. In Luke, he says: “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”

He emphasised that his followers leave the trappings of “home” to follow him.

I used to volunteer at a Christian charity, Casa de Maria e Marta, in a favela (slum) community in Rio, known for gang violence and drug trafficking. A larger-than-life Brazilian lady, Edimea, has run the charity for over twenty years. Almost a hundred children come to the charity each day, which provides three meals as well as extra tuition and care for the children. All of those who attend are either living in inadequate housing or are homeless. One day I asked Edimea whether she still sees the children after they leave her charity at age twelve. She laughed and said yes of course, they still come back to eat! And then she said,

“I do an assessment before I take a new child in, to understand what they know, and work out how we can best help them. And I always say to them – we take beautiful children, and so we are taking you, because you are beautiful inside and out. They come back because they don’t forget those words.”

Like Jesus, Edimea shows endless concern and love for those on the margins. She can’t solve all the practical problems she comes across or offer a permanent roof over a head, but she does provide a place where everyone feels a sense of safety and belonging. Perhaps home means more than the UN’s definition. It is about where you feel valued and understood… where you feel loved… and where you want to come back to.