By Sabrina Mahtani | Project Leader
Thanks to your kind support, we have provided critical welfare support to 196 girls and women in detention in prisons and police stations across Sierra Leone. Our first report focused on education and our second on legal aid. Therefore, we wanted to focus on welfare for our third report, although the funds you donated continue to support our justice and education programmes as well.
Due to a shortage of funds and overcrowding, it can be difficult for the Prison Service to supply essential welfare items such as soap, laundry soap, underwear and sanitary towels for female detainees. Mothers with young babies keep their children in prison with them until they are at least 2 years old. AdvocAid’s Social Worker, Katurah, and our paralegals in the provinces, ensure that female detainees are supplied with these critical welfare items on a regular basis. They also make sure that babies have clothes, milk, vitamins, nappies and baby food as well as basic medicines if the Prison Service is unable to provide this.
Your funds have also helped us to provide post-prison welfare support to 36 women when they are released from prison. This may be in the form of transport money so that women can make long journeys back home, start up grants so they can set up small businesses to provide for themselves and their families or support for vocational training. One success story is MK, the longest serving woman on death row who was freed after 6 years on death row following an AdvocAid appeal of her case. Your funds enable MK to attend a vocational training school of her choice where she is learning catering and tailoring. Below is a picture of some beautiful gara cloth she made.
It has been a challenging time for AdvocAid during the Ebola outbreak with several cities quarantined and much fear and panic. However, despite these challenges our team continue to bravely work to provide justice, education and welfare for female detainees. Below is a blog post which details the effect of Ebola on our work in the justice system. Our welfare provision to prisons has now changed to include essential items such as chlorine, hand wash and plastic gloves in order to ensure our staff and the Prison Staff are kept safe from the disease. Please consider donating today, no matter how small, to support our continued critical welfare provision.
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