About
Mama Haven
Mission &
History
Mama Haven aims to offer low-income parents a path out of poverty, through retraining, rebuilding and reimagining their future. By advancing education and promoting social inclusion, Mama Haven will focus on combating in-work poverty. We aim to connect our users with higher income employment opportunities by partnering with training providers and providing childcare support.
Championing financial equality for all parents, our vision is to create a framework that enables our users to get high level training and high-income employment opportunities.
The idea for Mama Haven came about in 2017, when founder Elise Brown was on a career break after having her second child. Whilst figuring out her next career move, she used this time to attend workshops, talks and researched into returners programmes. Sadly, the retraining programmes were out of reach for her, due to the high costs but as Elise had previously been in a mid/high income role she was able to access free workshops and activate her various networks to get back into work, with support from Action West London. Elise’s vision is to create a specialised support programme for low-income mums helping them to access courses to achieve a higher income and job satisfaction, whilst also focusing on their well-being, goals, children, relationships, and professional outlook. This in turn helps to provide a solution to in-work poverty.
Our Trustees
Elise Brown
Founder of Mama Haven, Elise is currently a consultant and project manager in the classical musical and arts industry. She has a 20-year career in the arts, music and entertainment businesses.
Elise combines her interests in culture and the arts with a desire to assist her immediate and wider community. As well as spearheading her own voluntary initiatives, Elise is on the Development Committee for Clean Break, the task force for Black Lives in Music, a trustee for United in Hammersmith & Fulham and is a Board Director at Leeds Conservatoire.
Elise is a mum to two boys and feels passionate about social economic equality.
Colin Payne
Colin attended school in Hammersmith and Fulham and has a strong affiliation to the local area of which Mama Haven will serve. He went on to study Music at the University of Liverpool, and now heads up the Ticketing department for a leading promoter of live events in the UK.
Mama Haven is designed to give parents the tools to explore new opportunities, which they may not have thought would be available to them. Colin is really excited to bring his professional expertise to the role of Treasurer, and help to create something special that can truly make a difference to people's lives.
Emma Booth
Emma is a solicitor with 20 years' experience in general private client work and private Banking. She has been living in London since being a student and west London is her home and community.
Emma grew up in Devon in poverty. Her mother showed her how you can improve your circumstances and achieve all the way through your life and this is why Mama Haven is important to her, as it aims to offer low-income parents a path out poverty.
Emma is a mum of two young children and very excited about starting this journey with Mama Haven. She feels privileged to be a part of it, where she hopes she can bring her personal and practical experience to the table.
Kaneen Morgan
As both a virtual PA and a mum, Kaneen is passionate about Mama Haven's cause. After working in a corporate background for a decade, she took a break to start her family. However, she became a single mother with a sick baby and had very few options to return to a traditional 9 to 5 lifestyle. Thankfully, through her business network and family support, she was able to launch her virtual PA company working with ‘mumpreneurs’, small business owners and local community projects. But she is acutely aware that these opportunities are not afforded to everyone.
Mama Haven's vision is very close to Kaneen's heart as she experienced first-hand the barriers for parents on low incomes to expand their skills and job prospects. She believes Mama Haven can bring about real change and is excited to be part of that.