Building Bridges
By Sankalita Shome
Pictures: Courtesy COSPE
Women, Children and Youth are the three pillars of society. Most of us would agree with this statement. Cooperation for the Development of Emerging Countries (COSPE ), a Italy based Non Governmental Organization (NGO) has been working at improving the economic conditions of sub-urban and semi-rural communities around Cairo, through promoting and supporting the initiatives of women, youth and children from these communities.
The Italian NGO started its operations in Egypt in the year 1998, in much the same manner as most NGOs start their operations in a country. They identified craftsmen and artisans that were engaged in producing the traditional goods of the country and promoted and encouraged them to keep alive this tradition. This intervention is still ongoing; but gradually COSPE has enlarged its area of intervention to achieve the vision that they have for Egypt; i.e. empowering communities to assert equal rights.
The Bridging the Gap project implemented by COSPE, with funding from the European Union and the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs is a concrete step in that direction.
At the outset of the project, COSPE looked at each community in isolation and tried to answer the questions “What is the gap in their lives, why are they living in such marginalized conditions?”
“We realized that Egypt had the legislative framework in place, both in terms of being signatories to international conventions and enactment of local laws. But lack of awareness of these legislations and poor implementation of policies are what was responsible for the gap,” says Elisa Freni, Project Coordinator.
Therefore the crux of the Bridging the Gap project was to educate and train the community members on their rights and build their confidence. “We wanted the community members to ascertain their own requirements, to seek out their own initiatives rather than impose our agendas on them. Our aim is to empower the children, youth and women of the region so that they themselves can set the pace for community development and improve the economic conditions in the region,” explains Mary Seif, Communications and Program Officer from COSPE
In the year 2004, COSPE had implemented a project, in the Abu El Nomros community in the 6th of October governorate, by trying to equip the Community Development Association (CDA) of the region to deliver better services to the residents. They helped to add more kindergarten classes to the ones provided at the CDA and also funded the CDA to start a library and reading place. In fact, COSPE’s intervention in the community was so successful that the women of the community came together to create an association for purposes of providing catering services for events held in the community.
But the euphoria did not last long and Seif explains the reasons for it “You have to understand that this is an extremely conservative community and hence the increasing independence of the women was frowned upon by the community members and gradually all the services had to be shut down as the women were restricted from accessing them.”
“We invested in the CDA as an asset-in creating structures and enhancing the service providing capability of the CDAs but maybe the focus should have been on equipping the women to stand up for what they wanted,” says Freni as she enumerates the learning from the Abu Nomros project, which stood them in good stead when they started the Bridging the Gap project.
Under Bridging the Gap project, COSPE has shifted the emphasis to educating the women, youth and children about their rights and empowering them so that “they can decide what they want and then have the conviction and courage to fight for it.”
This change in strategy, in fact, proved to be the biggest stumbling block in the implementation of the project. The Bridging the Gap project has been implemented in a very unusual manner for the Egyptians; far removed from the classical way that most NGOs operate here.
Freni makes a very important point when she says that most of the times the marginalized communities have misconceptions about the role of NGOs working for their betterment. They are regarded little more than a bank or a service provider. The participatory, a bottom up approach adopted by COSPE was extremely difficult to implement in the beginning and till January 2010, there was almost no progress. “It was like starting from ground zero; because we did not take the path that is usually followed by most NGOs, i.e. partnering with a local NGO or the CDA in that region. We did not consider the CDAs were responsive to the community’s needs and in fact the project aimed at reforming and strengthening the CDAs. It was difficult for the community to grasp that we were interested in knowing from them what is it they wanted us to do for them,” explains Freni.
The project started with a computer based literacy program for women in the communities in El Dessamy, El Saff, Abu Ragwan and Abu El Nomros in co-operation with the Ministry of Communication. 11 facilitators were trained, who in turn trained 90 women.
In the communities of the El Saff and the El Dessamy in the Helwan governorate, the Bridging the Gap project has been the most successful and is close to achieving the desired results. In El Saff, they started with educating the women on various subjects and disseminating information on issues that they themselves wanted to get more information on. There were classes on sex education, rights and civic duties, as well as health issues, all delivered over a period of 6 months. At the end of it, the women felt empowered enough to decide to form themselves into an association that could serve as a reference for others in the area.
“They had changed from women who were afraid to even express themselves into confident individuals who knew what they wanted and were willing to fight for it,” Seif told Community Times.
In El Dessamy too, the women have been empowered enough to form themselves into an association. The project is now seeking to train these women, who are already leaders in their own right, to encourage and to inspire other women in the community to also be part of the association.
“It is extremely important to get a critical mass; we want it to be a democratic association, not be in the power of a few selected women. More membership means that they can even restructure the plan of the association. For example, currently, most of the women who are members are housewives and mothers. If women who are bread winners for their family also join in, then their peculiar problems would also, in that case, get addressed,” asserts Freni.
“We need to connect the scattered groups of women in the community to the association so it can serve the community in the real sense.”
But the biggest challenge under the project, has been dealing with the youth as their requirements are unique and diverse. There is also the reality that the challenges faced by the girl youth are different from those faced by the male youth. To facilitate their work, COSPE tied up with an Egyptian Ngo that specializes in providing training programs to the youth. A two week training camp helped to break the ice and get rid of cultural stereotypes and inhibitions, with both the girls and boys, slowly becoming comfortable enough to speak about their problems in front of each other. Again, they have been successful in establishing youth communities in El Saff and Abu El Nomros.
Many of the youth members of the committee in El Saff work in the cement and the brick factories surrounding the area and are conversant with the problems faced by the informal labour sector in these factories, such as low salaries and no health insurance. After the 25th January Revolution, with the increasing prominence that the issue of workers’ rights have received, COSPE arranged for meetings between the El Saff youth, lawyers specializing in labour laws and some labour syndicates. Gradually, they are working towards educating the youth on the requirements of running a campaign so that they can fight for more equitable working conditions.
The other aspect of the Bridging the Gap project is forming social enterprises. The CDAs working in most communities have the assets to not only be the service providers but also become social enterprises in their own right. The project aims at providing the CDAs with training on management of the social enterprise and connection of initiatives to national and international networks so that they can become self-funding social enterprises. In turn, they can fund a number of social welfare initiatives in their communities.
Looking towards the future, Seif says that the possibilities are endless for the youth, children and women associations that they have helped form in these marginalized communities. COSPE aims to help the women, youth and children to form associations, decide on the scope of this association and then treat them as equals, and masters of their own destiny. The important thing is to create a sustainable movement and association that will be able to survive in the face of discouragement of any form.
For more information on their activities and projects, please visit http://www.cospe-egypt.org/
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