Doha Festival City, Qatar’s ultimate destination for shopping, dining, and entertainment, having recently revamped its brand positioning “It’s my Place, my Choice”, has partnered with the Protection and Social Rehabilitation Center (AMAN), one of Qatar Foundation’s social work centres, on an awareness campaign around domestic abuse, and to promote the center’s 919 hotline for reporting it.

The campaign, sponsored by the Seashore Group in this edition, was held for the second consecutive year as part of the mall’s #FestivalCares community initiatives, with the aim of protecting and rehabilitating women and children victims of violence and family disintegration and reintegrating them into society.

As part of the campaign, a dedicated awareness booth located on the mall’s ground floor was available from 22-25 February, where visitors learned more about the campaign and the services AMAN provides including the 919 hotline. Visitors also had the opportunity to leverage the valuable services AMAN provides to ensure necessary protection through a team of highly professional specialists who monitor, diagnose, document, and report cases as well as respond to inquiries.

Commenting on the campaign, Robert Hall, Doha Festival City’s General Manager, said: “We are pleased to once again partner with the AMAN Center to raise awareness on this critical societal issue. Domestic violence and family dysfunction remain a prevalent problem in today’s society around the world, and we are keen at Doha Festival City to support the center’s efforts to limit its detrimental effects on society. As a socially responsible organisation, we continuously strive at Doha Festival City to support beneficial causes, campaigns, and initiatives via our robust #FestivalCares CSR programme.”

AMAN strives to protect and rehabilitate women and children who are victims of violence and reintegrate them in society through its four-step process, Awareness, Protection, Rehabilitation, and Reintegration. The first step focuses on workshops, seminars, media campaigns and awareness programs to spread knowledge on violence and abuse; the second step provides social, psychological, and legal counselling and involves access, consultations, and empowerment; while Rehabilitation focuses on management of sessions, rehabilitation visits and internal care conducted by specialists; and the last step focuses on reintegrating target groups into their families and society and provides ongoing aftercare.

The Domestic Abuse and Violence initiative represents AMAN’s third initiative, after its successful “Do Not Touch Me” campaign against harassment and “Drop Off Your Kids” campaign, which encouraged parents to drive their children to school. The new 24/7 hotline can be reached on the number 919. It provides advanced services, for receiving requests for social protection and social, legal and psychological consulting services available 24/7 in four languages, Arabic, English, Urdu, and French. The hotline serves to refer calls to external resources in areas beyond the centre’s scope of work, receive new cases, transfer calls from cases to the centre’s specialists, and transfer calls from the centre’s specialists to cases.