Feb 7, 2018
Nadia Wiseman found herself struggling when she left an unsafe relationship: struggling to to pay rent for herself and her now-5-year-old son. Struggling to find direction for her newly single life. Struggling to find other women who could relate in her city of Montreal, Canada.
While she found ways to refocus her education and skills as a social worker, Nadia Wiseman launched Single MOMtreal, an organization designed to support single moms in need of resources like food and, clothes, friendship and, for some, help escaping domestic violence. So far, the group has served more than a thousand moms and their families.
"I knew that if I, an educated, professional woman, struggled with these things as a single mom, there were other women out there who were in the same situation," she told me. "I knew I could help a lot of people if I could build a community of single moms."
Last April she launched Single MOMtreal, which started as a Facebook group, and has has meetups, parties, and sprouted informal networks of all kinds of individuals and families supporting unmarried moms in Montreal. There is a board of directors, and Wiseman has a knack for attracting positive media coverage — which has inspired dozens of donors around her city to contribute money, food, goods and services to single moms in need.
Plus, friendships and mom-owned businesses are flourishing.
Wiseman says: "Montreal single moms are now helping and hiring each other. For example, some single moms hire other single moms to babysit their kids, others hire single moms to do their nails, others donate items, etc."