La Maison de l'Avenir : A dream comes true 7508
La Maison de L’Avenir : A Dream Comes True
Thirty years ago, on May 30, 1995, Her Royal Highness Princess Lalla Meryem inaugurated « La Maison de L’Avenir ».
Built by the Association l’Avenir, this long-dreamed home provides accommodation for families with a child undergoing cancer treatment at the Rabat Children’s Hospital, families who live outside Rabat and cannot afford the expenses associated with treatment and repeated stays in Rabat.
This home’ objectives were to enable children with cancer to receive treatment for as long as necessary, to give all patients the same chance of cure, to reduce the number of treatment dropouts, to avoid « the anguish of the night at the hospital” whenever possible, and finally, support parents in difficult times.
In June 1991, the Ministry of Housing granted the l’Avenir Association a plot of land in Hay Nahda II, Rabat. The association launched a campaign to raise awareness about the need to welcome parents of hospitalized children, using the slogan : “Help me heal, surrounded by those I love.”
Many individuals and organizations, both Moroccan and international, answered this appeal by donating time, money, materials, equipment, and expertise.
The result was a welcoming, functional house, a “home away from home” for families with children being treated for cancer or blood diseases at the Children’s Hospital in Rabat. It includes 22 rooms with two to four beds each, for a total of 54 beds. Families can stay there for a small fee, but above all, are asked to keep « their Home » clean and respectable.
When a new family arrived, devastated by the shock of diagnosis they have just received at the hospital, they found other families and other children undergoing treatment or returning for a simple check-up. They listened, got informed, learned, and little by little, the hope of keeping their child alive would return.
Thirty years later, La Maison de L’Avenir still exists and has helped to reduce the number of treatment and follow up abandonment, soften the medical, social, and psychoaffective conditions of children and their families, and ultimately, contributed to the healing of countless young patients.
