The 24-HR emergency help line is a way for women or concerned friends to get in touch with the shelter. They can get information about women's and children's legal rights about their situation and where they can get immediate help. It is also a means where they can receive psychological help via telephone or personal therapy session at our location in the center of town.

Through our 24 HR Help Line, the team also organizes women's help groups and training for students and groups that are interested.

The shelter is located outside of Cuenca. Its address is kept in private to keep the women and children safe.

In the shelter women receive accommodation (each family gets their own room), healthy food (a lot of children and women arrive with nutritional deficiencies), psychological help, legal advice and help in administrative tasks through the support of a social worker. The children have their own children's center where they get help to improve in school but also learn about non-violent ways of communication and have enough space to play and be happy.

It is with the help of our professional team that women decide on which steps they want and need to take to be able to restart their life without violence.

On average, women stay around 3 months in the shelter. But there is no time limit. The length of their stay depends on the problems they have to solve and the steps they want to take.

One of the biggest challenges for women with children is to find affordable and dignified housing. The rents in Cuenca a very high and landlords don't want to rent to women who have children. That is why a lot of the women end up in very dangerous housing situations when they leave the women's shelter. They live in small rooms, with a shared bathroom and toilet in the hallway. In this type of housing you will typically find a lot of single men/workers, which put the women and especially their children very often in an unsafe situation.

That is why the Foundation Maria Amor renovated 5 small apartments in the center of Cuenca. Women can rent those apartments when they leave the women's shelter at an affordable rate for up to 6 months. A social worker will make sure that the women get advice and support during those first months of independent living. They are also encouraged to save money so that later, they are able to pay the required guarantee payment for a safe apartment.

Another big challenge for women who try to start an independent life is to find work that is safe and where they are paid enough to actually be able to sustain their lives. A big majority of our women have not finished school and have no job training, which means the only jobs they find is cleaning houses. These jobs are traditionally low paid and involve long working hours, which makes it impossible for the women to take care of their children and start an independent and safe life.

That is why the Foundation Maria Amor opened the training center and small business: Mujeres con Exito.

Mujeres con Exito was found in 2006 with the help of Carolina, a volunteer from the US who brought the first funds to buy 2 used family washing machines and a dryer. From the beginning on the women where included in all decisions and felt, that the business was theirs.

Mujeres con Exito consists of three small businesses, a laundry service, a small café and a catering service where the women get hands-on training.

Mujeres con Exito aims at providing the women with the necessary knowledge, practice and self-esteem in order to be able to find a job and/or open their own small business. The women get training and earn their first money. Mujeres con Exito is run as an association which means, the women are not employees but actually members of the organization. In that way we want to empower them and teach them how to run a business, show them how to calculate prices, pay the bills, how to solve problems – in short: teach them how to make their own decisions and confront the consequences.