Orphans receive day at Fun City [Archives:2008/1117/Reportage]

By: Nawal Ali
A local charitable association in Sana'a recently helped more than 100 orphans spend a day at Fun City the day before Eid Al-Adha. According to the group, the event sought to bring together the orphans with other children to make them feel happy and that they are part of society.

Al-Bara'ah Association, a local non-governmental organization, held the event Dec. 17 for more than 100 Sana'a orphans it supports.

It was the first time the group had organized such a function, at which hundreds of toys were distributed to the children.

The orphans spent the entire day playing at Fun City, with the association's volunteers looking after them and providing them complete care.

The day was divided into three events, with the morning devoted to breakfast and playing the games at Fun City until midday, after which they had an hour-long lunch in Al-Saba'een Park, followed by the volunteers playing traditional games with them.

Entitled, “Working Together to Make Orphans Smile,” the event was one of Al-Bara'ah Association's most significant activities, focusing on giving orphans an opportunity to have fun occasionally in order to lift their spirits.

The association also does some charity work in donations and dedicating money to cover some of the basic needs of the orphans. However, it doesn't confine its responsibilities to orphans' basic needs (such as food and clothing), but also seeks to entertain them during eids. The group now is seeking to expand its activities to include programs for entertaining children.

Despite the organization's extremely limited resources, the orphans were taken to one of the most expensive entertainment venues in Sana'a, costing around $2,000 and paid for by one of Yemen's largest private telecommunications firms.

Established in 2000 by Ahmed Ishaq, Al-Bara'ah is an independent nonprofit association seeking to support poor families and orphans in Sana'a found through surveys and studies to identify the city's poor areas. Additionally, if the public informs the group of a poor family, they'll do a field study to be sure about the family before adding it to their list.

The day was one of many activities the association has done, such as providing social insurance for poor families and orphans, providing poor students with all of their school needs, providing poor families with basic foodstuffs, iftar foods after fasting, eid clothing and sacrifices and offering training courses to poor housewives.

The charity's mission is to promote self-sufficiency of poor families by supporting them financially and positively encouraging them.

Additionally, the organization offers such families projects and training programs to qualify the responsible member to stand on his or her own feet.

Many different projects have been selected according to market needs and according to family members' abilities, such as an executive secretary program, commercial courses and vocational courses such as sewing, blacksmithing and carpentry, etc.

Training programs include courses in English and computers, human development, communication skills, marketing, administration and many other manual jobs.

Including both men and women, the number of trainees increased from 66 in 2006 to 83 in 2007.
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