Single mothers may be the biggest beneficiaries this year of the Sally Davis Scholarship. On April 5, Cristy Hynes, now in her second year of a master’s program in Women’s Studies, was presented with the award – a $1,000 cheque to help fund a child care project she has conceived.

“I’m proposing, for the completion of my master’s, an internship at the [St. John’s] Women’s Centre on LeMarchant Road,” she explained. “Because of my interest in child care and children, I thought a good program would be to offer single mothers a drop-in service, as well as maybe provision of child care during other programming so they can take part in community events and activities, and access supports that they otherwise wouldn’t be able to.”

In announcing the award, Dr. Valerie Burton, graduate coordinator for Women’s Studies, noted that this award for Ms. Hynes signals the program’s commitment to improving and enriching the lives of both women and children.

Ms. Hynes developed the idea after noting a lack of diversity in the women who used the Women’s Centre. She hopes that providing this service – and promoting it in a targeted way to single mothers, including those in the multicultural community – will build participation at the centre.

Establishing a child care program where one doesn’t exist, however, isn’t as simple as breaking out a few boxes of crayons and putting the poisons away. Ms. Hynes plans to work with children’s programmers to develop appropriate activities and games; she also hopes to incorporate environmental education in the mix. And she will have to tackle some legal liability issues, as she found when she offered child care at the centre on International Women’s Day this year.

Perhaps most importantly, she will have to look closely at what both the mothers and the children need and want. Dr. Burton noted: “There are larger legal, educational, ethical and other issues to be examined in the provision of support for ... mothers and their children, and the fruits of Cristy’s investigations will find a wider audience in her internship report.”