By Siobhan O’Neill White

While we are all still trying to get through Covid physically and emotionally, we have no real idea yet what the long-term economic impact will be. Sadly, some of the much-loved local businesses in our local area have closed their doors because they simply could not stay afloat. The creche our daughter attended, the café and bakery we loved; both gone for good because of Covid.There are ways we can help struggling local businesses keep going. If they are offering online sales, try to buy online from them. If your local hotel, café or restaurant is doing a take-away service, support them when you can. Shop local as much as possible, so when we do get through this – and we will get through this – these businesses will still be standing. We know how to support retailers but for service providers, like www.mams.ie, it is not as simple as ordering a take-away or making an online purchase. Due to Covid, we are unable to run our free monthly parent & baby coffee & movie mornings, organize goody bag giveaways or plan blogs & events. Most of our clients are closed due to lockdown and cannot advertise right now, which affects our income drastically. mams.ie has provided free chat forums & parenting support for 12 years. Our events, competitions and goody bags are always free too. It would break our hearts to go out of business. We want to bring back our coffee & movie mornings post-Covid and keep the mams.ie website & social channels going until then - but we need some help to stay afloat.Some of our members suggested we set up a Go Fund Me page; so that parents who use mams.ie and our social channels and/or attend our events can make a donation. If you would like to support, please see here: gofund.me/5c743c3b Stay safe, take care and we hope to see you again at mams.ie events sometime later this year. Until then, please go to mams.ie for chat, advice, support and our wonderful free competitions.