Parent and baby groups could be the key to reviving rural villages in the Premier county.
Leonie Maher, co-founder of the Loughmore Parent and Baby Group said that the idea came out of the isolation she felt after having her first baby during the covid lockdown.
The group meet biweekly at the Cottage in Loughmore and aim to form a safe space for new parents and their babies.
Leonie says that the the group fosters a sense of community which is key to attracting people to rural villages.
“It all started very quintessentially rural, where the person who set up with me, Patricia Cooney, arrived to my doorstep there around October of last year – I was heavily pregnant at the time and she had recently had her second child as well so we struck up that conversation around what was potentially available to us in the community.
“She knew that there was a lot of other babies that were due or that had been born around the time. We were just coming out of Covid as well, both Patricia and myself had had our first babies during Covid so we were very isolated, so the idea that we could come together in some sort of community setting.”
