Dr Naomi Masheti, psychologist and programme director of the Cork Migrant Centre

When Naomi Masheti was growing up in Kenya, her mother was the person people turned to when they needed help. “She managed the community. Even the poorest person, she found a way to empower them. The charity organisations, they never went to the chiefs or the administration, they knew they had to go to my mum, she was the one who made sure that money or support actually went where it was needed.” 

That philosophy was very much in evidence when Naomi came to Cork from Kenya in 2001, settling in the suburb of Ballincollig with her young family. It was a new beginning, alive with opportunities but also challenges. In Kenya, she had followed the academic route, like her father, a university professor. She gained a business degree and worked for an oil company, but decided that the corporate world was not for her. Naomi went on to work for the International Red Cross in Sudan, where the immense human suffering that she witnessed changed her whole outlook on what she wanted to do with her life. She saw people struggling for basic needs such as housing and food but she was also inspired by their resilience and how communities mobilised to support themselves.  

When Naomi arrived in Ireland, she decided to pursue her dream of studying psychology. The family’s move here was in one sense a homecoming. It was a hectic few years, while she juggled her studies with childcare. Her two sons were in school and her youngest child was only nine months old when she began her degree in UCC; she would go to and from the university’s crèche to breastfeed her infant daughter throughout the day. It was also a fruitful and productive time for Naomi, as she began to forge relationships and supportive networks that would be invaluable in her work. Having witnessed how people survived war and humanitarian disaster, she wanted to move away from the more individual-focused psychology she was studying toward collective responses to psychosocial needs. After she was awarded her degree, she gained another qualification in clinical psychology, before going on to do a PhD on the psychosocial wellbeing of African migrant children, particularly in Ireland. This involved interviewing migrant mothers, who spoke to her about their difficulty accessing services and the lack of support networks. Naomi was able to empathise with the overwhelming uncertainty they felt. “I was a very confident person at home in Kenya, I knew about society, the rules, I knew my friends. And then you come here, and it's like darkness, you are nobody, you have no friends, it's like you have no hope, you don't know what tomorrow is.”  

She could also see the situation from the perspective of frontline service providers such as social workers and psychologists, who told her they often felt unprepared and overwhelmed. While she was considering staying in academia as a lecturer, Naomi could also see there was a gap that needed to be filled in terms of supporting migrants and the people who wanted to help them. She began by developing courses on cultural competence for psychologists, while continuing to work with migrant families.  

Then came a fortuitous introduction to Sr Jo McCarthy, who had set up the Cork Migrant Centre in 2006. When Naomi visited the centre at Nano Nagle Place, she says she felt the same as when she had studied at UCC — that she had found a home. That home also became a safe space for others. Naomi began setting up programmes for people from direct provision centres around Cork, covering everything from parenting to stress management. It was often emotional — Naomi recalls how they all cried as women shared their experiences at coffee mornings. There were also organised activities for young people, from dance and music to visual media. In recent years, services have moved more towards employment and education; the women at those coffee mornings made thousands of masks for people in direct provision centres during Covid and have gone on to set up their own social enterprise, catering for events. For Naomi, it is a huge source of pride: “I love that the women we started with that cried for six months are now movers and shakers.” Young people are helped with their homework and studies, and gone on to further education; many people who have gone through the centre have come back to mentor others.  

Throughout her work and the development of the centre, Naomi’s credo has been to “always follow the need, and then respond to that”. In the centre’s approach to education and empowerment, she sees the obvious resonances with the work of Nano Nagle herself. “We are doing what Nano Nagle would have been doing if she was alive today, trying to help marginalised people in difficult circumstances.” 

Cork is very much home for Naomi and she has built a supportive community of her own here, but she still has a strong connection to Kenya. Her three grown-up children, who all live in Cork, joke with her about how she has still held on to her accent. “If I’m going to be Irish/Kenyan, there has to be some Kenyan,” she laughs.  

As well as her work as programme director of Cork Migrant Centre, Naomi continues to work closely with UCC, doing advocacy work and teaching on international development modules, and she loves working in the ‘triangle’ of academia, research and community work. “What I'm teaching is very much what I'm doing.” 

According to Naomi, what she is teaching is what she is doing. Key to her approach and achievements is seeing a way around the many obstacles that have arisen. “Don’t accept a no. If there’s a block, find a way to go around it, because a lot of the time we block ourselves.”