Moroccan Aïcha Ech Channa receives $1 million Prize

Moroccan Aïcha Ech Channa receives $1 million Prize

Aïcha Ech Channa, founder and president of a Casablanca,

Morocco, organization that provides services to unmarried

women with children, is the winner of the $1 million 2009

Opus Prize.

Ech Channa, 68, is something of an icon in Morocco when it

comes to human and civil rights for single mothers and their

children. During the 1980s she worked in the Moroccan Ministry

of Social Affairs where she was confronted daily by the ordeals

of single mothers.

She recalled an afternoon in a social worker’s office where

a single mother was giving up her baby for adoption. “This mom

was breastfeeding her baby, which means she never wanted to

abandon it. And at the moment when she forcibly took away her

breast from the baby’s mouth, the milk sprayed all over the

baby’s face and the baby cried. This cry was in my head. And

that night I did not sleep. I swore to do something.”

In 1985, Ech Channa founded the Association Solidarité Féminine

in Casablanca to provide services for single women and their

children. She started in a basement and now operates

three day-care centers and training schools, two restaurants,

four kiosks and a hammam (turkish batb,fitness center and spa).

More than 50 women receive training every year in literacy,

human rights, cooking, baking, sewing, fitness services and

accounting. Participants also receive daily child care and

medical treatments in addition to social, psychological and

legal support and counseling for better reintegration in their

society.

Ech Channa, a Muslim, says she gains inspiration from a sense

of justice rooted in the value systems of all religions.

“I want Solidarité Féminine to be a model that provides an

example for the respect of human rights, economic development

and confidence in humanism,” she says. “This is a model that

can be carried everywhere in the world.”

Her organization was officially recognized in 2002 by the

government as a charitable organization and has received

support from Moroccan King Mohammed VI.