“I’m Hawraa, 28 years old, currently working at the community kitchen, where we prepare meals to support our community during challenging times. Behind Hawraa’s gentle features and quiet demeanor lies a story shaped by hardship—one of silent resilience and profound strength. “The day I joined this Cash for Work (CFW), opportunity and became part of the team, marks the day of shifting towards healing, this simple job, simple opportunity, became my space, and place to reclaim my voice, my confidence, and my future”. Hawraa is one of 214 women at the community kitchen led by INITIATE’s, in partnership with UN Women and the Union of Tyre Municipalities, with generous funding by the Republic of Korea.
She is a survivor of emotional and physical abuse, and a mother whose arms have been empty for far too long.
“I was raised in a conservative household, my mother believed it was better for girls to learn a vocation than to study, and I was forced to leave school” she says. “I grew up isolated longing for more, but not knowing how to ask for it.”
“So, when marriage was offered to me, I didn’t take it out of love—it was my way out. My husband had a troubled past and was known for reckless behavior, but my family believed that marriage might calm him. For a while, it seemed like it would. I started to find some balance in the relationship, even a little hope. But then everything shifted. His family began to resent the influence I had over him. And he—he became violent. Each time he beat me, I ran back to my parents. But the truth is, I had nowhere else to go.”
“Pregnant and broken, I moved back to my parents’ home, hoping it would finally be over. But I was pulled back into the cycle. I returned, thinking I could give my newborn daughter the family I never had. But the violence only got worse. The final blow came when he divorced me and took our baby—an 11-month-old girl I haven’t seen since.
She’s eight now,” I say, my voice trembling. “She doesn’t know me, and I don’t know her. It’s like living in the shadow of motherhood—being a mother in name, but not in life.”
For years, Hawraa lived in the quiet wreckage of her loss, each day shaped by absence and silence. Then came a shift—an unexpected opportunity, modest yet life-changing.
“When I joined the kitchen team, it was like breathing fresh air for the first time in years,” she says. “I found support. I found a reason to wake up. I felt human again.”
“Here, I am not just cooking meals, I am cooking a new life and reshaping my future. With Every new skill I am learning, with every conversation I have with the women in the kitchen, every laugh shared is contributing to my healing. Slowly, I am starting to believe in myself again.”
“I’ve started to make my own decisions,” she says. “No one else gets to tell me when or how I see my daughter. I’m still scared of that first meeting; what I’ll say, how she’ll look at me. But I want to meet her, not as a woman broken by the past, but as a mother who found the strength to rise.”
Today, Hawraa is focused on building a life rooted in dignity. She’s learning, working, and dreaming again for herself, and for the child she still hopes to hold one day.
“This program reminded me that I am capable. That I matter. And when the day comes that I finally see my daughter, I want her to see not my sorrow but my strength.”
