JEDDAH: The Al-Mawaddah Society for Family Development in Makkah claimed in a press release on Friday that it has improved the quality of life of 590,000 families in Saudi Arabia by 80 percent over its 20 years of operation.

When it launched in 2003, the society was initially focused solely on Jeddah, but it has gradually expanded to cover the Kingdom’s 13 administrative regions.

Its initiatives include the Al-Hayat Academy, which has enabled 12,000 divorced and widowed women to support their families financially through vocational rehabilitation.

“The society also reunited more than 26,000 separated families with their children, and protected more than 21,000 families from domestic violence through the Family Protection Center, and treated 2,500 children with behavioral and developmental disorders,” said Faisal Saif Al-Din Al-Samanudi, the society’s chairman, in a press release.

Al-Mawaddah’s Family Counseling and Dispute Resolution Center has, the press release said, resolved 32,000 family cases without court hearings.

Al-Samanudi said that over the past 20 years, the society has “qualified more than 4,400 thousand family practitioners and specialists around the Kingdom.”

In order to improve the quality of family life, Al-Mawaddah Society has published 54 research papers that “accordingly contributed to the enactment of national legislation in partnership with the government sectors concerned with family issues, including the national initiative to rehabilitate those who are about to get married, as well as research on divorce rates,” the release stated.

Al-Samanudi said that Al-Mawaddah has also supported more than 200 non-profit organizations inside and outside the Kingdom, with over 200 strategic partnerships built to serve families and empower over 20 organizations through outsourced projects.

This year, the association launched three portfolios of impact, social investment, and sustainability, which included 17 new initiatives and 91 development projects.