Egypt
Serving the girls and boys of Egypt since 1982, Save the Children seeks solutions to enable all Egyptian children to enjoy childhood and reach their full potential. Our chosen role is to assist poor and vulnerable children to successfully navigate the five critical childhood transitions: 1) birth and the neo-natal period, 2) weaning, 3) school, 4) middle and secondary school, particularly for girls, and 5) adolescence to adulthood. To achieve its vision, Save the Children works with empowered families and communities, child-friendly schools and clinics, committed NGOs and businesses and visionary policy-making institutions. Save the Children works intensively in the Upper Egyptian governorates of Minya and Assiut and manages or supports projects in six other governorates around the country.
Challenges for Children
As the country develops, Egyptian children face new challenges, even as the old tragedies of poverty continue to haunt 40 percent of families. Thousands are born into poverty, where malnutrition at a young age translates into lifelong health problems. The pressures of making ends meet drive many families to put their children to work, often in hazardous occupations that jeopardize their health as well as their futures. As more families break up or drift into the anonymity of urban slums, street children are becoming a feature of the cities. Many rural adolescent girls are discouraged from completing school and face lives of early marriage and domestic seclusion. Each year, hundreds of thousands of youths become new job seekers in an economy that cannot grow fast enough and many remain idle for five to ten years.
Numbers at a Glance
- The death rate for children under the age of five in Egypt is 41 for every 1,000 births, while the neonatal death rate is 33 for 1,000 births, representing over 60,000 child deaths per year.
- 25 percent of the country's 71 million people live below the poverty line of less than $1 a day. Of this group, over half live in Upper Egypt.
- About 40 percent of rural school children are anemic.
- 2.7 million children engage in some form of work.
- Female genital cutting is still highly prevalent, at 98 and 92 percent in rural and urban areas respectively; early marriage is still common, with 17 percent of girls under 19 married.
- 54 percent of rural Upper Egyptian girls, ages 13 to 15, are not enrolled in school, compared to 11 percent of boys.
- Egypt's labor force must absorb 800,000 new entrants every year.
Our Response:
Health
Save the Children's Infant Health and Nutrition and Communication for Healthy Living programs offer safe pregnancy classes and infant nutrition classes in 25 villages in the Upper Egyptian governorates of Minya, Fayoum and Qena. These programs promote awareness on care for pregnant mothers, the importance of regular medical check-ups, simple, healthy lifestyle messages and nutrition information for mothers-to-be and mothers with weaning children. Based on the principle of positive deviance, mothers are taught successful local practices that improve their children's nutritional status and their future ability to learn and grow.
Save the Children's Early Childhood Care and Development Program promotes the social, physical, psychological and cognitive development of young children with the aim of increasing the proportion of children who enter and succeed in primary school education. A key feature of this program is its provision of care in settings close to children, including home-based preschools in outlying rural areas. Save the Children supports more than 200 preschools, and now works closely with the Ministry of Education to promote home-based preschools as a cost-effective way to prepare children to succeed in school.
Education
Save the Children's Basic Education program in Egypt promotes active learning through teacher training, student participation and dedicated community involvement. This program now works in partnership with the Samalot District Education Department, improving educational quality and access for 70,000 students from 204 schools. Working in the same schools, our School Health and Nutrition Program complements the Basic Education program and improves the health status of children, which then improves their educational performance in schools. This program facilitates children's access to health insurance services, provides school children with health awareness, annual check-ups and improved sanitation in schools and builds community support for health and hygiene. Our close working relationship with the Ministry of Education has led to the Ministry's adoption of several of our interventions at the regional and national levels, including our pivotal school model for teacher training, our Arabic booster curriculum, our health and hygiene manual and coordination mechanisms between the school system and the health insurance system.
Youth Development
Save the Children's youth programs help adolescents, those who are enrolled in school as well as those who have dropped out of school, to meet and benefit from adolescent-relevant and youth-friendly transition programs and activities that prepare them for further education, life opportunities and challenges.
Ishraq, ("enlightenment" in Arabic) enhances the life opportunities of out-of-school rural Egyptian girls by providing safe spaces for them to learn, play and grow. Implemented in 10 communities in Minya and Beni Suef, Ishraq offers literacy classes, life-skills training and sports in an integrated curriculum, as well as builds the family and community support needed to allow the girls to gain new life opportunities and delay early marriage. A complementary project for adolescents in school, Tomohaat El-Shebab provides 12-15-year-olds with health, livelihood and civic information and skills that they apply in community service projects in 40 schools in Minya.
Another youth project, Injaz ("accomplishment" in Arabic) provides preparatory school students with career orientation and skills to better prepare them to compete in the job market when they graduate. Delivered in government schools by volunteers from private sector companies, Injaz builds young people's understanding of their own capacities and of the way the job market functions. During the 2006-7 school year, Injaz reached 13,000 students from 52 schools in greater Cairo and Alexandria. Save the Children has recently registered Injaz as an Egyptian foundation which is governed by a board of CEOs from leading Egyptian and multi-national companies.
Save the Children also uses the "positive youth development" methodology to enable youth and youth groups to demonstrate their leadership potential. Save the Children's regional project Naseej: Community Youth Development supports 11 youth projects in Egypt and many more in Jordan, Lebanon, West Bank/Gaza and Yemen. Siraj, ("lantern" in Arabic) is developing a comprehensive youth leadership manual and identifies and promotes positive youth role models.
Plans for the Future
Save the Children has prioritized program areas which address the critical childhood transitions, focusing particularly on infant health and early childhood development. Save the Children intends to make a major contribution to government policy and social practices on infant health, leading to sustained reductions in neo-natal mortality. Supporting Egypt's commitment to dramatically increase enrollment in the pre-school stages of education, Save the Children will foster a more holistic approach to early childhood development in Egypt, encompassing both services and parental behaviors with young children's health, education and psychosocial development.
Save the Children will also continue to address child health, basic education, youth livelihoods and child protection. We will address child malnutrition by advocating family behaviors and health services that address child nutrition and health. In basic education, we will increase our program focus on the two critical transition points where many students falter, particularly girls; the transition into primary school and the transition from primary school to middle school. Our youth livelihood programming will prepare youths to make the transition to work successfully, and our child protection services will strengthen the capacity of child-serving institutions for both preventive and remedial services.
A Success Story: Delivering a Healthy Baby
Sarah Ahmed knew a good opportunity when she saw one. When local women began talking about a new program that was being offered in Shousha for pregnant women she quickly convinced her daughter-in-law Amoura to sign up. "When I was young, we didn't have these types of opportunities. There was no health clinic in town and I never had a check up. The local daya (midwife) helped deliver all five of my children in this same house" she says with a laugh. Amoura was apprehensive at first but was quickly made to feel comfortable as she attended her first class. Over time she states she learned a great deal in the safe pregnancy sessions where she was given special attention because she was in her first pregnancy. She says the most important messages were about exclusive breast feeding: "People here always give their babies sugar water in the first months, but now all the women know that this is not good for the baby" she says. She was also happy when her mother-in-law was invited to attend a session to learn about adequate daytime rest. "I think we both learned a lot" says Sarah.
