The story of Catherine and Rob van Vijfeijken’s group of friends
Catherine spent half a year living in her car. With Rob, Rita and Hein beside her she is training in maternity care, and in her first week of placement she helped deliver a baby.
This is Catherine Maame Ama ODuro, bottom right in the photo. The other lovely lady is Rita, the grey-haired man is Rob, and the other grey-haired man, Hein, sadly did not make it into the picture. The three of us support Catherine from Ghana. Funnily enough she was born in the Netherlands, moved back to Ghana with her parents, and has now been back for four years in the country she fell in love with.
She works as a cleaner, which is a good foundation, but housing was another matter: she moved from place to place, and even spent half a year living in her car (!). Living out of a car is hardly doable for a young woman. Fortunately she now has a property-guardian home, which gives her time again for her Big dream!
As a little girl she dreamed of becoming a midwife. That is possible in Amsterdam, but it is not easy. First she had to brush up her Dutch, reading and writing, all of it important for her training. We managed to arrange a (free) language course for her, which she finished in May. Then we worked out with her which routes were open for that study. In the end we arranged a maternity care course at MBO College West in Amsterdam, with a placement at Procare kraamzorg straight away. And sure enough, in her very first week on placement she got to help bring a real baby into the world.
Catherine is getting closer and closer to her goal. Amsterdam and the surrounding area are home to many (pregnant) women from Ghana and other African countries. She speaks their language as well as French and English, and her Dutch is back to excellent. Catherine is a cheerful, strong woman who, thanks above all to Rita’s warm support (woman to woman), is watching her dream come true. It is a classic win-win, for her and for Dutch society, which is crying out for care workers. Her current employer was so taken with the Homies project that he donated no less than €1,000 towards her studies.
It snowballs: Catherine is happy, the maternity care service is happy, and so are we. Now and then we go out for a bite with her, celebrate her birthday, give her a call… And the lovely thing is that we, as a group of friends, learn a lot from it too. Being a Homie is a fine way to do something good close to home, here in the Netherlands, where it is badly needed.
Yes, sometimes dreams come true. Her first baby as a maternity carer in training.
And this is Catherine a year earlier, when she was still living in her car. VPRO made a short documentary about it.