Ode to Elfriede Sinester | The founder of Mi Oso Es Mi Kas

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Elfriede Sinester: driving force behind first community center for girls

When Elfriede Sinester launched her successful community center for teenage girls in the Amsterdam Bijlmer district in 1985, government support was not yet a given. Yet she manages to make her project a success.

Elfriede Sinester - ninth in a family of eleven children - was born on September 29, 1938 in Paramaribo. Her father is a fisherman, her mother a servicewoman. She does not want to “serve” with anyone. At school, she encounters racism and class discrimination. Her dream of becoming a teacher shatters when there appears to be no money for tuition for the School of Education.

When an education inspector stopped by on her last day of school at ULO to ask who wanted to become a nurse, she eagerly raised her finger. Moments later she is working in the oldest hospital in Suriname. 

To the Netherlands

At nineteen, Elfriede married. In 1963 she moves to the Netherlands. She and her family are assigned a four-room house in Amsterdam's Geuzenveld district. She is in her mid-twenties when her fifth and last child is born. Caring for the children binds her to her home. Nevertheless, Elfriede becomes a group leader in a child care home. She takes the Child Protection course, but drops out due to overwork three months before the final exam.  

In the early 1980s her marriage runs aground. She is now well into her forties and thinks, “Now it has to happen. Just before her fiftieth, she gets her degree in social work from the Hogeschool Haarlem. 

Mi Oso Es Mi Kas

During her internship at a youth center in the Bijlmermeer, Sinester is surprised to run into almost exclusively boys. In no time she gathered a group of enthusiastic teenage girls around her. Soon they are given a special place in the former women's home. Quite a few of them are unwed mothers. While the teenage mothers go to school or work, she takes care of the children. There is a living room cum living kitchen, and of course a room for the children. The first community center for teenage girls in the Netherlands is a reality, in the middle of the neighborhood where most of them live.

It is 1986. She gives the community center an apt name: Mi Oso es Mi Kas (“My house” in Surinamese and Papiamento). The atmosphere is casual. On the couch, people watch music programs and the Oprah Winfrey show. Afterwards they talk about all kinds of subjects together. They take turns cooking in the kitchen. En passant, the girls talk about the delivery of their first child or do their homework. At a later stage, they can surf the Internet for free and even take part in a computer course. 

Teen mothers

The teenage mothers in Mi Oso es Mi Kas are predominantly between the ages of 15 and 23. The community center is also a stopping place for “normal” teenage girls. Many teenage mothers live in the Bijlmer, mainly of Surinamese and Antillean origin. There is an accumulation of problems: poor housing, homelessness, low income, benefit discrimination, debts, unemployment, unfinished education. The girls experience intense things: ongoing conflicts with parents, affective neglect, domestic violence, forced sex. By no means do the fathers always take responsibility for raising their children. In Sinester's words, “They often go from flower to flower. 

Ironclad formula

In Suriname and the Antilles, there is the help of mother, aunt or grandmother. In the Netherlands, no such network exists. Mi Oso es Mi Kas provides that. The Child-Mother project is the core of the work. While the children are taken care of, the girls get a listening ear in a living room-like setting. Important is the mutual support. In between, the workers pick up useful signals.

There are also “regular” community center activities. For example, there is a very successful dance theater project and a girls' festival is being created - with the challenging title “Hello, We're here too. The cinema is visited, outings are made and there is a weekly get-together. Even foreign vacation trips and formation weekends are on the program.

'We must avoid anything that contributes to stigmatizing them as 'pathetic' or problem cases. They are people who have certain problems due to their life situation; these problems have been evoked in part by society. They therefore also need social help with those problems. These words are by Elfriede Sinester and they come from an internal manual. The working formula developed in practice is proving ironclad. Neighborhood center work, child care, assistance and training work are smoothly combined. 

Fight with the institutions  

In 1992, Mi Oso es Mi Kas comes into the hands of a large welfare umbrella organization. The sense of home disappears. The low point was the scrapping of the Child-Mother project, the very crux of the work. But the girls and the workers recover. They fight for a nicer accommodation. It comes. In 1998 is the grand reopening. A second girls' festival is organized, with the motto “On your own terms”. The Child-Mother Project gets a second life.  

'To this day we are asked why we don't start again.'

Still there is no structural subsidy. Indignant at lack of support from the district council, the staff lay off work on the eve of its 20th anniversary. Demonstrable results do not result in political appreciation. Policy makers are accused of pouring millions in subsidies into super-sized institutions. The bitter conclusion is: there is no confidence in the organizational strength of black civic initiatives.

Just before Christmas in 2007, the axe is thrown. The recognition that Elfriede Sinester has since received - she is knighted in the Order of Orange-Nassau and nominated as Amsterdam Citizen of the Year - is not enough. 
 

The congregation makes an unconvincing attempt to continue the work. It is short-lived; the soul is out. Elfriede left for Suriname in 2010, planning to stay there for good. At 72, she still finds the energy to start a similar girls' project in her native country. In 2016, this stops. Since 2022, she has been back in the Netherlands. 

Vital Initiative

Mi Oso es Mi Kas is a voluntary civic initiative that bubbles up from the community. Neighborhood orientation is its foundation. Through its effective formula, the project grows into a serious new neighborhood facility. But the government fails at crucial moments. It is thanks to the intrinsic motivation of Elfriede Sinester, and of the workers around her, that Mi Oso es Mi Kas has lasted more than twenty years.  

A daughter of Sinester reveals anno 2024, “To this day we are asked why we are not starting over. That says it all.