national awareness of Domestic Violence

In all honesty, working with Al-Shaheb has truly been a struggle because no one has been available to meet with us or give us any particular assignment. After getting tired of floating around and chasing after the people we are supposed we are volunteering for we finally got some intervention from our Professor and the people down at the Development support center. After speaking with Abdo this past week, he has decided to place me in the program focused on domestic violence seeing that I had previous experience working with organizations who have aided the victims of domestic violence as well as counseling the perpetrators of such violence. My task at Al-Shaheb is to come up with an abstract or a proposal on a program that can be implemented on a national level. This program will be aimed at exposing domestic violence as an issue within Egyptian society and involving the local police force in matters of this kind.
I’ve come to realize that promoting a program of this kind will face some major taboos within this society however; it will help to bring awareness to younger and older generations and hopefully encourage some action to spring from a local level in support of victims. I’ve been informed by Abdo that the local police force is not really active in situations when they are called to intervene in domestic disputes. I believe starting a training session for Police officers who are willing to learn more about Domestic violence and how they can be effective in change. Although this may be going against the grain, I believe Egyptian society has changed within the past decade and will continue to change as environmental and social issues like this are increasingly being bought to the forefront. Backing from government and local lawyers in the future will be needed in order to create laws that protect victims and punish the abusers. In order for there to be a positive outcome, research will have to be done to understand the gravity of this issue. What type of abuse is more prevalent ( physical, verbal, mental, emotional), how often abuse is reported and the people that are affected by it the most(children, members of a specific religion, uneducated etc).
I do believe that a program like this could work on a national level but would first have to start in a particular area such as Cairo. Al-Shehab has already made attempts in its Domestic Violence to provide support for both men and women who have been affected by this issue. I do believe that working with the victims and perpetrators on a personal and group level is beneficial but taking this to the individuals who hold leadership positions within cities and rule on a national level would make this a more recognizable subject.
If a program like this takes flight I believe there will be a lot more sensitivity to the subject from members of different socio-economic status, individuals of various religious affiliation and both genders.