Dear Editor,
With great sadness and frustration I read the unsettling letter-to-the-editor written by Sarah Ciotti in response to the positive March 11th article written on momstown.ca. Ms. Ciotti described momstown as an exclusive clique which "promotes social exclusion".
Unfortunately, Ms Ciotti has not yet had the pleasure of even joining momstown.ca so does not speak from personal experience.
With great sadness and frustration I read the unsettling letter-to-the-editor written by Sarah Ciotti in response to the positive March 11th article written on momstown.ca. Ms. Ciotti described momstown as an exclusive clique which "promotes social exclusion".
Unfortunately, Ms Ciotti has not yet had the pleasure of even joining momstown.ca so does not speak from personal experience.
As the co-founder of momstown.ca I can confirm that if Ms Ciotti were to join she would find that our group(s) are full of warm, welcoming and passionate local mothers. The entire goal and focus of momstown is including ALL mothers and warmly welcoming them into the folds of other neighbourhood parents.
momstown.ca currently exists in five communities with three new ones (including Guelph) opening this month. We are as community focused and inclusive as it gets, especially for a non-government run agency. We are based on a open platform, warmly including all members of the community to participate and momstown works very closely with agencies like the Early Year Centres and Regional Health departments as we share a common vision to empower parents and educate children.
For a varied response, I posted Ms Ciotti's letter on our message boards in other momstown chapters to see what 1500 (paying) members felt about her claims.
momstown.ca currently exists in five communities with three new ones (including Guelph) opening this month. We are as community focused and inclusive as it gets, especially for a non-government run agency. We are based on a open platform, warmly including all members of the community to participate and momstown works very closely with agencies like the Early Year Centres and Regional Health departments as we share a common vision to empower parents and educate children.
For a varied response, I posted Ms Ciotti's letter on our message boards in other momstown chapters to see what 1500 (paying) members felt about her claims.
Uniformly, our members were aghast at such suggestions of exclusivity and all agreed that momstown helped them individually and introduced them to many resources to make them better parents.
Yes, momstown does have a fee of $45/annually which works out to $3.75/month for access to over 30 activities monthly, which in our mind delivers great value. For those that can not afford to join, momstown has a community action fund to help those mothers, something Ms Ciotti must be unaware of.
I sincerely hope that Ms Ciotti's agressive letter will not turn away potential members who need a neighbourhood connection but stay away because of one person's incorrect and uneducated statements about a group of people she has never even met.
I sincerely hope that Ms Ciotti's agressive letter will not turn away potential members who need a neighbourhood connection but stay away because of one person's incorrect and uneducated statements about a group of people she has never even met.
In this day and age of a struggling economy when budgets for government funded community organizations are cut, an organization like momstown.ca is even more paramount to helping a growing community.
Shame on you Ms Ciotti for attacking something that you know very little about.
Shame on you Ms Ciotti for attacking something that you know very little about.
What a week so far.......
1 comments:
very well said A-M. Momstown ROCKS!
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