Women for Change Award: two projects in favour of women in the Mediterranean selected

Five projects from five women were submitted to the votes between the 15 of September to the 15 of October on. Coming from Egypt, Spain, Jordan, Morocco and Tunisia, the five candidates lead projects that act for women facing difficulties and improve their autonomy in their countries: women rights, professional insertion, social care, victims from sexual exploitations care, handicapped women education.

More than 20 000 net users voted! And they chose to recognize the project of Khedija El Madani (Tunisia), who will receive the Internet Users Award, which comes with 25,000 euros in aid from the Orange Foundation, to set up a network of “sentries” to monitor discriminatory practices against women.

Khedija El Madani is founder and President of the Association for Equal Opportunity and Vigilance (AVEC): AVEC's objective is to ensure that men and women have equal opportunity in terms of social development, including access to education, health services and jobs.

Nora Fitzgerald Belhacen will receive the Judges' Award, which also comes with 25,000 euros in aid from the Orange Foundation to enable women from disadvantaged neighborhoods to create their own culinary microenterprise. Nora Fitzgerald Belhacen is Founder and President of the AMAL Association for the Culinary Arts that offers training to women, which includes cooking and entrepreneurship. The purpose of the project is to make these marginalized women economically independent and self-confident.

The three other candidates will receive 5,000 euros each from the Orange Foundation to support the deployment of their projects:

Lily Fouad Attallah, Executive Director of the Development Association for Empowering Special Needs (DAESN) (Egypt): The NGO's objective is to train 20 substitute teachers so that girls with visual deficiencies can enter the conventional school system.

Rocio Nieto, Founder and President of the Association for Prevention, Rehabilitation and Support to Prostitutes (APRAMP) (Spain): The Association's objective is to enable women who are victims of sexual exploitation and the slave trade to regain their freedom and dignity in training six former victims to create a local network to respond rapidly to emergency situations.

Nour Al Emam, Member of the Board of the Arab Women Media Center (AWMC) (Jordan): The project involves the organization of a media campaign to promote gender equality and raise awareness among the Jordanian public of this cause and of women’s rights with a documentary film that will deal with topics such as women’s unemployment and the discrimination they confront in the work place.

The awards were given out by Christine Albanel, Senior Executive Vice President of Orange and Deputy Chair of the Orange Foundation, by Jacqueline Franjou, Chair of the Women’s Forum for the Economy and Society and by Marianne Mairesse, Chief Editor of Marie Claire Magazine.

The Women for Change Award is a joint initiative of the Orange Foundation and the Women’s Forum for Economy and Society, in partnership with Marie Claire magazine. For its third edition, the Women for Change Award puts the spotlight on actions by women of the Mediterranean in 2015 that are committed to improving women’s rights as well as their health, education and integration into the workplace.