Women’s Counseling Homes: an Indispensable Service

Women’s Counseling Homes: an indispensable service

Author: LUZ MARÍA MARTÍNEZ ZELADA
La Habana, jueves 20 de agosto de 2009. Año 13 / Número 233

A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.

In the last 19 years, around three million people have been received in Woman and Family Counseling Homes in Villa Clara province, a sign of the social impact these services have on the community.

The first of these facilities was opened in the capital city Santa Clara on September 8, 1990 as a prime objective of the work undertaken by the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC), in charge of a 170-strong network of these centers nationwide.

Their main purpose is to deal with concerns related to real gender equality, child upbringing, legal guidance and the provision of training in several skills of citizens who don’t work or go to school.

Provincial FMC board member Mayelín Díaz told AIN the organization will celebrate its 49th anniversary on the 23rd with outstanding results in this sphere.

New projects like the Family Courts –consultancy on legal topics regarding couples and childcare– come on top of this effort, she added, which our centers provide in the form of interpersonal communication skills and measures to prevent family violence, alcoholism, AIDS and drug use.

Idalmis Pedroso, a beautician who has given hairdressing and cosmetology courses in one of these local institutions for 18 years, talked about the importance of these programs to help men and women who neither work nor study to learn a a trade and better reinsert themselves into society.

All the 17 Counseling Homes in this central province are staffed by half a thousand volunteer professionals, including psychologists, teachers, attorneys, doctors and speech therapists.