Welcome to our now annual Out with the old, in with the new blog post as we say goodbye to 2019. We asked Delft MaMa Chairwoman Meredith Mull Aggarwal to share an informal review of what we’ve done this year. Grab a cup of your favorite beverage and enjoy a review of the year behind us before we look ahead in the year to come.
Update! We won the competition!
The Delft MaMa blog won the Parenting Blogs Award 2019 with 53% of the total votes. According to the editor Kate Groves, the blog is for the community and by the community. To attract non-native English writers, the blog team also has two volunteer proofreaders. Kathryn Roscoe and Candice Lamothe ensure the posts are easy to read for everyone. Kate says it is essential that people keep volunteering to write and to keep suggesting relevant topics. The blog editor humbly shares the award with the Delft MaMa community: “This award belongs to you [Delft MaMa community], because your suggestions made the posts happen. This award also belongs to the writers that bring your suggestions to life with their own voices, and to the writers that come forward with their always creative content!” Winning the Parenting Blogs Award 2019 is a recognition of the Delft MaMa volunteers’ hard work. More than that, it shows the strength of a community that never stops growing and creating new connections in the Netherlands.
I’
m proud to announce that Amsterdam Diary has nominated us for a (Dutch) Parenting Blogs award for 2019! In their nomination, they wrote (original text is in Dutch):
This site is perfect for all parents in Delft. You can read about events, workshops, play groups and more. The website is in English, and during the events there is mainly English spoken. This way you can get to know people from other countries and cultures, and teach your children to interact with others who they may not immediately understand. With some gestures and lots of play, the kids will make friends without problems, even if they don’t have the same background at all. It is therefore an enriching experience for both parents and children.
If you’d like to vote for us, please find us at this link and submit your vote! Voting closes on 28 June.
Any questions? Please contact us.
On April 18, 2016, Tarja van Veldhoven and Agnès Battlori Benet posted the very first post of the Delft MaMa blog. This April we’re celebrating the blog’s 3rd blogiversary!
I talked with some of our past editors about their experiences working with the blog and if they wanted to share some memorable posts for your reading pleasure. As I tried to map a timeline of people who helped run the blog, I quickly realized that while Tarja and later Marie were major coordinators of the blog, there were MANY contributors that helped keep the blog running smoothly. While I haven’t been able to track you all down, know that we appreciate you! Happy reading…
The Delft Mama Blog is growing! We are currently looking for fresh, local voices who are passionate about Delft and interested in sharing their stories. This is a volunteer role, but there are some really fun perks to make it all worthwhile. Here’s what you need to know… Read more
Delft MaMa wishes you all a Happy New Year 2019! As we close the old year, it’s always good to look back and reflect, to be able to continue to build on past successes and work on our weaknesses. For the first post of 2019, we asked DMM Chairwoman Marie Kummerlowe to give a year in review of Delft MaMa in 2018 and what we hope to expect going forward in 2019. It’s a long post, so grab your favorite beverage and get yourselves comfortable. Happy reading! Read more
In 2007, Lucie Cunningham set out with an idea to start Delft MaMa. She never imagined the impact it would have on the community and countless lives over the years. We sat down with Lucie, Delft Mama’s founder, to learn more about her personal story, how it all got started and how things have evolved. Read more
It’s been awfully quiet around here, huh? The previous Delft MaMa (DMM) blog coordinators, Tarja and Marie, have moved on to other things. So, understandably, things have slowed down a bit here. That doesn’t mean it’s been quiet with DMM… There’s plenty happening behind the scenes. Some of which you may have noticed if you follow our Facebook page.
The DMM blog has not been forgotten!
Many of us agree that the DMM website has been a great starting point and resource for many expat parents new to parenting in Delft. We feel that the blog is a great way to keep adding informational content on a regular basis. That’s why we have a new team for the blog, not of writers, but editors. Onica and I take feedback from you, the DMM community, for topics you’d like to see on the blog, and we look for writers to get those articles out into the world.
Two new faces
I’m Kate. I joined the blogging team in January after innocently making a suggestion for improving the blog and winning the responsibility to see it through. After living in several places in the U.S., I moved to Europe in 2006, starting in the Czech Republic and ending up in Italy, working as an English teacher and educational researcher. One fateful Christmas I took a holiday trip to the Netherlands and sat across from a handsome, smart and funny man at his family’s Christmas dinner. Fast forward a few years of a long distance relationship and marriage, I moved to the Netherlands when I was pregnant with our daughter. These days, in addition to being a mom to a rambunctious little girl and two lazy furkids, I’m making another attempt at finishing my PhD and figuring out what I’d like to do when I grow up.
Here’s Onica, her words taken from another part of the blogosphere:
Okay. So my name is Onica – don’t ask, think my father made up the name back in the day. I’m more bi-polar (depending on how much sleep I get) than type – A or B. In a nutshell, I’m a US expat who married a tall dark and handsome (to me) Dutch man and am now living and raising our little in the lovely historic Dutch town of Delft. The more convoluted version includes Trinidad, Venezuela, UK, Italy, and various other stops in between. Formerly an ICT Researcher/Consultant (still trying to figure out how and why that happened given my Philosophy and Economics background), I now spend a considerable amount of time shuffling our little around to endless activities, trying to avoid the endless chocolatiers and cafés that have recently emerged in Delft center, and sporting (primarily tennis) to minimize the impact of those failed attempts.
Our writers
Our journey in the search for writers has been very interesting—our writers all come from the DMM community and come from all walks of life. Other than the topics we’ve proposed, some of the writers end up proposing something completely awesome that didn’t even occur to us. We send them into the wild to write their articles, which are then edited by us, or our team of proof-readers, before publishing on the blog. Sometimes we look for “experts”—either specialists in their field, or those who have valuable anecdotal experience on the topic—to work with our writers. We look forward to seeing so many diverse perspectives on the blog in the future!
What to expect
Over the next few months you’ll begin to see a mixture of interviews with feature moms from the community—formerly Delft Mama of the Week—and articles about topics interesting to us expat parents raising their littles in Delft and the Netherlands in general.
What are “topics interesting to us expat parents”? Glad you asked! Last month, if you recall, we sent out a short survey about the blog and newsletter to which we received 44 complete responses.
Here’s what those responses wanted to see on the DMM blog. 
Other topics of interest included language, healthcare, education and the general sharing of experiences with other parents having/raising a child in a foreign country.
Of course, 44 respondents can hardly represent the hundreds of members in the DMM community, but the responses are an amazing starting point for us to develop themes, combined with input from you, the DMM community.
On the horizon
We’ll be kicking off the new DMM blog with two series of articles—one, organized by Onica, will focus on Delft activities for primary school-aged children; the other, organized by me, will focus on play—toys and even where to borrow them.
We don’t want to spoil the surprise for the rest coming up after these two series, but know that we should expect to see some very interesting articles pop up on the blog in the coming months. If you’d like to contribute, contact us. We’d love to talk with you about your ideas. Even if you don’t want to write something yourself, please contact us with your ideas and suggestions. This blog is for YOU!
We’re looking forward to this journey with you,
Kate and Onica
