With the launch of the New Life project in cooperation and partnership between the Association for the Welfare of Women Prisoners and the Drosos Foundation in 2014, the program directed support to a number of women who have been released from prison, or others who have been searching for a hand to pull them out from behind bars, to come out to light and freedom, days and nights spent by the workers of the association They investigate the cases, their truth and the extent of their needs, they respond to the call to the oppressed, and their eyes are on children who have not committed any crime, except that they are the children of the prisoner or the former prisoner, until the project of a new life was named after it, giving the kiss of the beginning to women looking for a lighter than living in Egypt.
Hope is Renewed With the New Life Project ... Continuous Success Stories
Stories and success stories of some women, in which a “new life” was the support and support for the women. Here they are representatives of others in the program, for the project that completed a year to help 220 women inside and outside prison, by providing legal, professional, psychological and social support to cases.
“Nawaat Bidaya of the Association of Women Prisoners” with these words, Ahmed Abdel Rahman, Director of the Integrated Support Unit at the Association for the Care of Women Prisoners, described Omaima Zaki, the first female prisoner of poverty. 2007 on the pages of Al-Akhbar newspaper.
Omaima was the guarantor of her day-worker father in signing trust receipts, which he wrote on himself to buy a device for his daughter-in-law, the father died, and the older sister found a bad fate after the merchant presented the trust receipts to the prosecution, and soon she found herself within the walls of the women’s prison in Qanatir al-Khairia, sentenced to prison Three and a half years.
The meeting between Writer Nawal Mustafa and Omaima was the beginning of the thread to shed light on the problem of fines stigmatized by society, and the journalist worked hard during only three weeks to search for creditors, pay the amounts due, and end legal procedures.
Omaima left her two-year-old daughter at the time, knowing nothing about her; Therefore, Nawal Mustafa summarized the case in the slogan “A mother’s imprisonment = displacement of a family“, to start her work through the Association of Children of Women Prisoners, to receive hundreds of fines.
After Omaima was released from prison, she accumulated debts as a result of bearing the entire family’s expenses, especially after her divorce, and obtaining a pension of 320 pounds. To cross from her dark tunnel and out into the light.
Hence the role of the psychological support unit of the association, and work was done on the case of Omaima, which “Umaima” described as “Omaima, which was a group of problems and cracks,” especially after she had a stroke in the left foot. Where they were relied upon to urge the woman in her thirties to work and not be dependent, and Omaima responded and entered into a transgression with her children.
After completing the psychological rehabilitation, the association came to the role of vocational training, providing a source of livelihood for Omaima, and in turn, Mina Moawad, the official in charge of vocational employment and training, first opened a “grocery store” for the lady, then moved to the “knitting” training workshops, and soon She learned and regularly came to the workshop on a daily basis from nine in the morning until five in the evening, despite her residence in the “Abu Zaabal” area in the Qalyubia governorate.
Ahmed Abdel Rahman indicated that the Psychological Support and Psychotherapy Unit, Suad Hilal, relied on the defiant behavior of Omaima’s case to prove to her children that she was still able to face the serpent and provide the necessary expenses for their upbringing. Constant thinking about the future of her two children was the main motivator that was used in her psychological rehabilitation.
The result was the children’s feeling of the mother’s improvement, and a change appeared in Omaima’s positive behaviors, and she decided to write on the door of her apartment the phrase “New Life” the name of the project that transformed her imagination from complete stagnation and dependence to a life full of hope and a look to the future.
