Sprout E-course Alumnus Story: Chuka Patrick Ekweogwu

The “Free X” project takes on the many issues facing Dubai women prisoners when they are released. With a lack of resettlement services and job training for women, the result is often poverty and an increased likelihood to re-offend. One reason women may end up in prison in Dubai is debt (within the UAE, debtor’s prison is a legal institution); in addition, financial difficulties may lead a woman to enter the underground economy and, as a result, the criminal justice system. The broader society’s disregard for ex-convict women makes it difficult for women to re-integrate, and without job skills it is very difficult to gain financial independence and thus break the cycle.

Free X uses volunteers to teach female inmates job skills to help them to re-enter the work force, as well as working with institutions to create a support network for resettlement. It is designed as a 3 month training program to develop literacy, public speaking and computer skills towards employability and self-reliance as they exit the criminal justice system.

Project founder Chuka Patrick Ekweogwu, originally from Nigeria, is studying for his M.Sc in Project Management in Dubai. He has a Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, is a coordinator at a breast cancer foundation and a youth program coordinator for the World Safety Commission in Nigeria.

Free X was first developed at a Microsoft YouthSpark event by Ekweogwu and 3 others. When members of his original team left to pursue other interests, Ekweogwu used the YouthSpark network and his own network to build a new team of 5, 4 of whom are women in Dubai. They are currently holding planning and training sessions and recruiting volunteers. The team has met with Dubai Central Prison in Al Aweer and another prison also in Dubai, seeking approval and a license to get free visitations and free sessions with the prisoners in order to launch the program, hopefully this year.

Through the successful resettlement and employment of ex-convict women in Dubai, the team hopes to make an economic as well as a social impact on the lives of the women. Explains Ekweogwu: “They need to know that there are people out there to listen to them; there are people out there that feel that they should still have a sense of belonging in society.”

By integrating the women back into the work world, Free X also challenges the rest of society to re-think their stereotypes about exconvict women, and women in the workplace. Ekweogwu and his team are building upon a broader shift in the culture around women working outside of the home, that has been encouraged in part by expatriate women’s increased visibility in the workforce of Dubai.

“I think things are changing and I believe with time people will learn to accept ex-convict women into society,” says Ekweogwu. The Microsoft YouthSpark event and its virtual community were essential to Ekweogwu in developing his project, as was the TakingITGlobal Sprout e-course, which helped him to organize, market and manage Free X.

“It was a very good platform from the period of brainstorming and addressing of issues, forming goals, and even making the marketing campaign and pitch. Because of it, right now I can get an idea and dissect it and put it into proper formation. Being in my field, of being a project manager in the making, it was very valuable.”