Our Halfway Houses serve women coming out of prison and shelter.
Women coming out of prison often have no home and family to return to, or will be risking their lives if they return home. Most women in prison have committed no crime-- they are in prison because they're have ran away from abuse, are accused of adultery, or are taking the rap for a husband, boyfriend or brother.
Women in shelters often have the same problem. They have shamed the family and must be punished. Women alone often end up walking the streets or turning to prostitution. Many end up dead. There is no solid evidence about this population because they aren't worth worrying about enough to collect data. They are simply erased.
But WAW worries about them and also about their children if they have them. What will happen to the children, now thriving in our Children's Support Centers and attending school if they have to return to a village in the middle of nowhere, without a school to attend, and to extended family who will torture if not kill them and their mothers. These women will enter WAW's Halfway Houses, the only facilities of their kind for women at risk in Afghanistan. There they will learn a vocation, how to read and write, how to manage money and other life skills. In other words, we will help them prepare for their independent futures. We will find them jobs and a place to live when they're ready to move out of these safe places and into the world.
This important project rounds out the mission of our Family Guidance Centers, our shelters, our Children's Support Centers: to preserve and protect human rights for Afghan women. We hope to build Halfway Houses in every province where we work.