KEEP 100 MOROCCAN CHILDREN AWAY FROM ABANDONMENT

Dear friend,

As the year is ending, Moulouda, our Family Strenghtening Program Officer in Imzouren is still working hard to make sure that vulnerable single mothers can keep their children with them, recover dignity and offer their kids the schooling they need to break the circle of poverty.

I would like to tell you a success story that YOU made possible, by supporting Imzouren Family Strenghtening Program. I hope that reading Fatna’s family story will bring you as much joy and hope as I felt when I heard it. (We have changed all the names, out of respect for our beneficiaries’privacy)

Fatna was illiterate and had four children - 3 girls and one young boy - when her husband abandoned the family, leaving Fatna alone and vulnerable in a conservative region where lonely mothers are stigmatized.

Desperate and afraid, Fatna followed the advice of a friend and knocked on Imzouren Family Strenghtening Program doors at the end of 2011.

She was then completely lost and did not know how to cope with this situation. Fatna had to leave her native douar (rural town) where the community isolated her. She was working as a cleaner in different homes to earn little money that barely paid for the rent of her poor home. Traumatized by her parents painful separation, but also by the extreme poverty in which she had to live, Hajiba, Fatna’s oldest daughter had dropped school in her last year of secondary school, right before entering highschool and was expressing a strong inferiority feeling. Khalid, Fatna’s youngest boy, was also suffering from the sudden departure of his father. He was struggling to follow his primary school 4^th grade curriculum and was on the verge of dropping out of school. Fatna was then feeling so depressed and helpless that she was thinking about abandoning her children.

When she entered our Family Strenghtening Program, what Fatna needed the most was psychological support and hope for her children’s future. Fatna committed to participate seriously in all our awareness sessions and capacity building trainings as well as leaving her kids at school. In exchange, we helped her with food and hygiene packages, health services, psychological support for her and her children, trainings and awareness sessions and covering all schooling expenses.

Progressively, we witnessed Fatna’s transformation: she gained more and more self-confidence and showed an incredible motivation to learn. She learnt how to read and write thanks to the literacy classes we offered. She learnt how to be a better mother and defend her own rights and her children’s rights thanks to the awareness sessions we provided. You should have seen Fatna’s smile when our FSP officer explained the Moudawana to her and she discovered that her children and herself had many rights, even thought she was divorced from her husband. Finally she learnt how to become the head of the family and shape her own future thanks to our Family Development Plan. Fatna decided to follow a cooking training: this also participated in recovering self-confidence and helped her prepare healthy and cheap meals for her family.

In the past 4 years, the children have also metamorphosed, and you should hear how proud Fatna is when she presents her four jewels.  We provided Khalid with tutoring classes and a reinforced individual monitoring: he is now in secondary school and is no longer thinking about dropping out of it. His sister Ghita is in highschool, she will pass her baccalaureate certificate next year after benefitting from our advisory sessions and orientation workshops. Btissame is a brilliant law student in Oujda Mohammed 1^st University and wants to defend the rights of women and children. She is well armed for her future professional life, after following our trainings regarding time and conflict management as well as job research techniques. Hajiba who was the most affected by her parents’ conflict, followed individual coaching sessions. She progressively recovered pride and the will to go back to school. Following her tastes and the orientation advice of our FSP Officer, she decided to follow a 2-years catering vocational training in a well-known Institute. She successfully graduated and, thanks to the FSP support (job research technique, networking etc), she was hired in a restaurant in Al Hoceima, a touristic city 20 minutes from Imzouren. She is now helping her mother to provide for the family needs.

Fatna, matriarch of a revitalized family, is now walking head-high. She found a regular job in a micro-finance company (with a contract, guarantees, and health insurance). She wants her 3 younger children to pursue their studies as long as possible, to be able to follow their dreams and above all, she wants her 3 daughter not to depend too much on a future husband. No doubt that with this powerful example, Ghita, Btissame and Hajiba will follow their mother’s advice.

In 2015, Fatna and her family were declared autonomous. They are no longer part of our Programme but Fatna is grateful for all the support she got and she is now guiding vulnerable single mothers who are at risk of abandoning their children towards our FSP. Fatna asked me to thank all our supporters.

So on behalf of Fatna, Hajiba, Btissame, Ghita, Khalid and all our Imzouren FSP beneficiaries for the past 4 years, THANK YOU!