Handmade products for the Persons with special needs in “Open Doors” Exhibition

The “Open Doors” Exhibition was opened last Saturday at Bab Touma Al-Qaymariya in Damascus. It was organized by the (Al-Sfina) community for the Persons with special needs.

Annual “Open Doors” exhibition which lasted for two days included handmade works such as, painting on cards, recycling paper, sweets, chocolate, straw works, embroideries, accessories and others made the hands of people of mentally handicapped.

Al- Safina Community was created in 1995 and is presently taking care of 70 young handicapped persons who live with their families and come daily to Al Safina, live together, and share educational activities such sport, psycho mobility, rhythm, etc..

Mrs. Rima Absi, the Head of the Community’s Board of Directors, told Syriatimes that, “the exhibition is held annually to market and show pride in the handmade products of young handicapped people working in the Safina workshops in Damascus and Jdeidet Artouz”.

 “We aim to support them and develop their skills, as they are trained under the supervision of qualified trainers to deal with this category according to the degree of disability of each of them”,Absi said.

 “We started working in Beit al- Safina (the Ship- house) from27 years in the parallel of Beit Al- Safina or the community of Al- Safina’s project, which is the residence of adults who have a mental disability and have been deprived of their families”, Absi added.

“We train 70 people in our workshops in Damascus and we have 15 supervisors every year. We try to develop their products where the handicapped persons feel pride and happiness. We hope to enlarge and develop our work” Mrs Absi said.

 Rimon, a supervisor and trainer said that “we try to show new things in every exhibition and to develop the abilities and skills of those handicapped people and this needs time and effort”.

Sawsan, another supervisor, who has been training handicapped people since two years to make handmade chocolate.

“We aim at making those people feel active and enable them to do good things” Sawsan said.

Reported and photos By :Nada Haj Khidr