5x1000
Donate now

GMA Napoli, encouraged by its positive experiences with the Women’s Promotion Centers in Shashamane and Meki, has replicated the same project from within the female prison of Shashamane with the goal of restoring a measure of dignity and hope to these women through jobs in handicrafts (weaving, embroidery, wicker work, and sewing).

In addition to training, we offer literacy programs as well as schooling for the children who are detained along with their mothers through no fault of their own.

Let’s help these mothers... Let’s help these children !!!

Project description

The female division of the Shashamane prison houses approximately 100 inmates together with about 30 of their children. The incarceration is the result of both small and large scale crimes. For many years now, GMA Napoli has worked closely with the sisters of the “C. De Foucauld” congregation in taking care of these women who, even within that context, are considered to be the dregs of society. So many stories of their redemption and consequent reintegration into the community make us want to continue along this path, and we really can’t abandon Sister Maria Pia and Sister Sara to deal with this alone.

How do we work within the Center ?

We provide tools, literacy programs and work: indispensable elements for social and economic reintegration. A nursery school for children of pre-school age (less than 6 years old) permits the children of the inmates to prepare themselves for the future. We have managed throughout the years to also place older children, accompanied by a guard, in an elementary school located outside the prison grounds. This helps to maintain the mother-child relationship, and at the same time, to prepare them one day for a less traumatic reintegration into the community.

GMA Napoli bears the costs:

  1. For the women’s job training and literacy programs.
  2. For operation of a nursery school for the younger children and for placement of the older children in an elementary school outside the prison grounds.

Objectives

  • Ensure the female inmates basic education and professional training, which have a positive effect on hygiene, as well as health and safety levels;
  • Training in self-sufficiency through legal forms of earning in order to support children and relatives outside of prison, once their prison sentence is completed and they are free to leave;
  • Grant forms of microcredit upon release from prison to invest in horticulture, small businesses, breeding of poultry and small farm animals, and the manufacture of products;
  • Contribute towards prevention of crime and other forms of violence;
  • Ensure school education to children from the ages of 3 to 10;
  • Facilitate future integration outside the prison walls;
  • Ensure the mother-child relationship.

Direct beneficiaries:

The female inmates and their children

Indirect beneficiares:

Family members of the female inmates and the local community

Annual budget:

15.000€ for wages and salaries of trainers and teachers, purchase of consumables (sewing machines, various equipment, and food) and microcredits

 

N.B. All of the proceeds and donations from GMA Napoli’s Solidarity Shop will go towards this project.

Click here to go to our Solidarity Shop.