Life Foundation’s Cinderella

Emotional neglect from parents towards their children is harsher than physical offence. Since a neglected, rejected and unwanted child gains negative social characteristics, for they become depressed, bitter and recluse, unable to face the challenges of a different life in the future.

So what about an orphan child, with living parents? Her life consists in her grandmother, who acts like the girl’s father that watches and medically cares for her, stays up to attend to her needs, helps her study, which she learned to read and write for her sake.

Shouk, a 14 year old child who is in the seventh grade. She’s been in a short circuit accident through playing around next to the house curtains when she was only 4 years old, which led to a full body disfiguration and the death of her older brother. She was then taken to the university hospital in Al Zagazig to receive treatment for a duration no more than 6 months to take care of the disfigurations and hair plant. During the time, her parents only visited 4 times at the least. Yet who played their part, was the grandmother who spent all her savings and abided to taking loans from Nassir Bank and other people with large interest rates to continue Shouk’s treatment.

Until she put herself under so much debt and was judge , for signing a reliable receipt, with prison for a year and 1,000 EGP as a fine and now she’s on the run

In contrast, the parents, the mother holds the child responsible for her brother’s death which has resulted that the mother has constantly attempted to kill her, once by trying to throw her from the balcony of the fourth floor but the father has been able to save the situation, and another time, she has tried to bury the child alive in her brother’s resting place, but fate has it, that the grave keeper wouldn’t open the grave for them. That is other than, the torture and beatings that have resulted in the breaking of the child’s front teeth as well as treating her as a maid whenever she goes to see her three brothers.

The father, a coffee shop owner, is afraid of the wife because whenever he sides with the daughter, his wife threatens to leave the house, thus losing the girl’s rights of living a normal childhood between her parents and siblings.

The grandmother came knocking on the foundation’s open doors, hoping to get aid. The rehabilitation and reintegration unit was the perfect solution for her, as they took the responsibility upon themselves to give the child psychological treatment with the constant monitoring of the grandmother’s case through the legal unit in the foundation.

 The treatment program includes psychological individual sessions as well as art therapy, and they have recently celebrated with her the  success of completing the first term of this year. She now considers the foundation her second home, where she finds safety and acceptance from all of it’s members and the foundation aims to shortly reunite the family together.