Every week, at least three mothers receive support for their newborns or small children in the form of nappies, clothes and blankets from a foundation that is now seeking to upgrade the help it offers these struggling women.

“All babies deserve a good start in life. Their mummies, rightly so, want the best for their babies,” Francesca Fenech Conti, from the Women for Women Foundation, said.

The items are sometimes second-hand.

“But, now we are upgrading,” Fenech Conti said.

Inspired by the Finnish baby box model, the foundation wants to destigmatise the help provided by making the box “more attractive and filled with new items”.

The foundation, set up a year ago, also tries to support women facing difficulties by offering education funding and emergency financial aid.

Their mummies, rightly so, want the best for their babies

“We had single mothers and women struggling financially because their husbands are ill. In the past few months, we have helped about three women a week by providing items for their babies or young children,” Fenech Conti said.

The foundation works closely with social workers and NGOs to reach out to women in need.

The idea is to offer the revamped baby boxes for free to mothers in need but also offer them for sale at reduced prices and use the money to support the foundation.

The idea builds on the work started by obstetrician Max Brincat in January 2020, just before the pandemic struck.

Brincat had noticed that some new mothers lacked basic supplies and he started collecting clothes and other items.

He said that he saw about two cases a week of mothers who gave birth without having these basics immediately available, most of them migrant women.

Brincat welcomed the initiative of the foundation to move things forward and provide support to women in need, saying: “There is always need for the community to support one another. There definitely are a lot of women who are not fortunate enough to be able to provide clothing for their newborns.”

He noticed there was a lot of waste when it came to baby clothes and “we should do more to recycle them”.

Fenech Conti said she was keen to collaborate with anyone towards achieving the same goal – supporting mothers in need.

Elaine Compagno, who works at the foundation, added: “Women are at their most vulnerable during pregnancy because they face increased risk of domestic violence, losing their job, having few job opportunities and health complications.

“Many mums have other children to look after and some of the women are abandoned during pregnancy while having to care for the other children too.”