By Leanne Greenfield | Development Intern
The end of the year often marks a time of celebration and relaxation with loved ones. Unfortunately, however, for the women in Freetown’s Female Correctional Centre, this is not possible. At AdvocAid, we believe the festive period is about giving and about sharing, so it was important to us that the inmates, despite being away from their families and confined to the, often undignified, conditions of the correctional centre, received Christmas gifts and were able to celebrate together.
This is why, in mid-December, AdvocAid visited the Freetown Female Correctional Centre with festive packages for the women there. We provided 123 women with donations of clothes, food, and toiletries, and clothing and nappies for their babies. It was wonderful to see the women enjoying themselves as they tried on their new dresses! The welfare packages we provide are vital in ensuring inmates’ rights are upheld, given how limited resources can be at the detention centre. One inmate thanked our Programmes Officer for the food donations, saying: “We are so grateful to be receiving these packages because the food we are given here in the morning is never enough to keep us going until the next meal. This food is a blessing.”
Not only is providing welfare support a primary element of our mandate but, at AdvocAid, we believe that improving education is crucial to facilitating progress in the lives of the female detainees. Poor literacy levels and lack of education are key contributing factors to the ongoing marginalisation of women and girls in Sierra Leone. The UNDP Human Development Index records the population of females aged 25 and older in Sierra Leone with some secondary education at 16.8%, almost half that of males (29.7%), whilst literacy levels of female youths (aged 15-24) are a fifth below their male counterparts, at 59.3%. To help combat these figures, we are currently seeking contributions to help us provide literacy classes for the inmates at Freetown’s Female Correctional Centre. With enough books, we hope to open the centre’s first library! This will be an exciting opportunity for the women to improve their reading and writing skills, something which is vital to their empowerment and to increasing their chances of successful rehabilitation and a brighter future upon release.
We hope that you will donate to this project today so that we can continue to provide our welfare support, enhance the educational facilities available to the women at the correctional centre, and provide them with literacy classes. Help empower women in Sierra Leone today! We welcome you to share this report with your contacts and encourage them to donate to this project, or one of our other GlobalGiving projects today.
Please sign up to our newsletter, via our website, and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to get the latest news about AdvocAid’s work.
Links:
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
Support this important cause by creating a personalized fundraising page.
Start a Fundraiser
