She was addressing mediapersons, social experts and businesswomen who are interested in the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) concept at the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry. The event “CSR is our message” was organized by Hemayah. It focused on the importance of businesses taking care of the less fortunate through participating in voluntary work.
The CSR is a partnership between the public and private sectors and civil society to solve social problems.
“The JCCI is the first commercial chamber in the Kingdom that established a special department for social responsibility to encourage companies and institutions to adopt CSR development initiatives,” said JCCI Secretary-General Adnan Hussain Mandourah.
Al-Ghamdi said Saudi society misunderstood Hemayah’s mission.
“The objective of our organization is to protect victims of domestic abuse, remove them from their harasser and inform the police. We also provide victims with treatment, medicine and food. However, our first priority is to protect victims, not to support them financially,” said Al-Ghamdi.
“Many women try to benefit illegally from charity organizations. Some Saudi women claim they are suffering from poverty only to receive financial aid. Actually, we helped many of them, only to discover later they were lying,” she said.
“During the flood catastrophe, we visited a Saudi elderly woman in south Jeddah. The flood damaged her furniture, so we gave her a fridge, an oven and a washing machine. After we left, her neighbor met us at the entrance of the building and said she already got electrical appliances from other charity organizations and the Islamic Development Bank. He also said his neighbor hid the appliances in the building’s attic to sell them later,” said Al-Ghamdi.
She added, “When we went to the attic, we discovered a large number of appliances and homeware. She then confessed she was planning to sell the items.”
Al-Ghamdi told about another woman who phoned Hemayah last Ramadan. She claimed to be living in a very old and run-down house on the mountain.
“When we visited her, we saw the house contained no furniture, and it was really damaged. Two of her neighbors and the district chief confirmed she was living there with her children," Al-Ghamdi said.
“We gave her money to rent an apartment, buy furniture and all the necessary homeware. We also gave her food for a whole month,” she added.
After Ramadan ended, Hemayah visited the elderly woman and discovered that she was lying, and she was living in a villa in Jeddah.
Al-Ghamdi said the Ministry of Social Affairs and charity organizations should have a database with family names, contact details and information about their financial status.
“We need such a database to accurately assess each family that comes to us for help. This would help us rule out double-crossers. We also want to establish a link between charity organizations, so we can make sure that we don’t deal with the same people more than once,” she said.
Nora Al-Asheikh, director of the supervision office at the Ministry of Social Affairs in Jeddah blamed the media for dealing unprofessionally with abuse victims.
“Stories in the media depend almost always on rumors and defamation. This doesn’t serve our goals and it delays our efforts to rescue victims,” she said.
Col. Talal Al-Saidalani, from Jeddah police, participated in the event and said the police department registers a large number of domestic abuse cases every day.
“Unfortunately we still receive large numbers of such cases, involving women and children. Most of these cases take place in the south of Jeddah,” he said.
Al-Saidalani added, “We hope to solve these cases professionally without discrediting the victims and their families. Saudi media played a big role in upsetting our strategies and work. For example, the media negatively interfered in investigations into a serial rapist who attacked underage girls in Jeddah. The unprofessional publications of Saudi media bothered the police and delayed the arrest of the rapist,” he said.
