EGYPT: Egyptian Government and United Nations launch initiative to educate girls in rural areas

The Egyptian government and the U.N. are working to ensure that girls, and some boys, in isolated rural areas get an education, at least through the primary school level. The project hopes not only give the children involved a basic education, but to involve their parents and community leaders in finding solutions to economic and social problems that keep them out of school or lead them to drop out early. For many of the girls who grow to be women in rural Egyptian villages like Abu Hummus, completing school is a luxury -- if they ever start in the first place. Here, poverty is the norm and educating girls and young women is often an afterthought. They are regularly put to work or married off young -- or both. And in places like this, sending daughters to schools that are often far away is considered a needless waste of scant resources. It is a problem that the government, in cooperation with the United Nations and the European Union, are trying to address with an ongoing project to build one-room schoolhouses aimed at girls and some boys in isolated areas. Authorities hope the project will give girls a chance to complete at least primary level education. The ongoing effort to close the gender gap in literacy between men and women in Egypt is a pressing issue, with UNESCO reporting in 2006 that, of the 39 percent of Egyptians who are illiterate over the age of ten, over 70 percent are women. One girl who has enrolled in school for the first time, thanks to the project, said factors beyond her control had held her back until now. Samia Saeed is now a student at the newly opened Abbas Sayyed Ahmed Girl's Friend School in Abu Hummus. "Our financial circumstances were very bad. And there was no school anywhere near us at all," explained Saeed. "So when the "Sadikat al-Fata" ("The Girl's Friend") school opened, I was slightly older, and the people in charge of the school worked really hard getting us all enrolled in the school. And I really wanted to enter, and I really love learning, so I distinguished myself and thank God did very well," she added. The government and the EU claim their efforts to improve educational opportunities for girls have proven a big success thus far, increasing enrollment, lowering dropout rates and generally improving community involvement in school life. The EU says its Educational Enhancement Program (EEP), which helped fund the new schools, has helped raise Egypt's enrollment rates by 12 percent since 1996 and has led to as much as a 27 percent increase in school enrollment for girls in some villages. The new one-room schoolhouses are part of an attempt not only to bring more girls into the educational system, but also to change the way students are taught and schools are managed. "Our teaching differs from traditional school instruction in that we try to teach the girl or boy in such a way that they do everything with their own hands. We create a method, we don't give them the information directly. They discover the information, through research, discovery, through using various methods, or through creating something, until they absorb the information. We don't give them the information easily," said teacher Rihab. The Abbas Sayyed Ahmed Girl's Friend school works on what the instructors call a system of "active learning," whereby students are not only taught by example rather than by rote, as is customary in Egypt, but are also given a role in how the school is run and how their fellow students' problems are solved. Every morning, for example, the children sit in a horseshoe shape and discuss their concerns and put their input into a suggestion box. The suggestions are then taken out of the box and discussed with them. Schools like Abbas Sayyed Ahmed are being built in seven districts where the problem of gender inequality in education is acute -- in the south in Sohag, Assuit, Menya, Beni Suef and Fayoum, near Cairo in Giza, and in the north in Buheira where Abu Hummus is located. Overall, 727 schools have now been built, enrolling 2,753 students, around 75 percent of them girls. Ibtisam, another young teenage girl attending primary school for the first time said the project has helped her rid herself of a long-standing sense of shame. "Wherever I used to go, I didn't know how to read or write. People used to ask me if I know how to read or write, and I would say no. Honestly, I would look at them, and in their hearts they would be thinking: this is an ignorant girl who doesn't know anything. And when I would speak to them, I would feel as if I were lower than them," said Ibtisam. Changing attitudes towards educating girls is a difficult process and one that involves addressing not only the conservatism behind it, but also the root socio-economic causes. Small projects like this might not affect the larger systemic issues in Egypt that create poverty, like the closed political system and what human rights groups call endemic corruption, but they do attempt to address poverty at the local level. The new school hopes not only to give the children involved a basic education, but to involve their parents and community leaders in finding solutions to economic and social problems that keep them out of school or lead them to drop out early. That is why there are no school fees at the new institutions, and all school supplies are provided. Saidaya, the mother of one of the newly-enrolled female students, said she was very impressed with the way the school is run. "This school has become the best school. Education without money, there are no fees, there is a uniform, there's nothing (to pay for), notebooks and pens, it's the full treatment. And it's a good education. They memorise the Quran, they learn mathematics," she said. The innovative approach to primary education is tailored to finding solutions to the problems that afflict poor farming communities like Abu Hummus. Teaching the children to be involved in problem-solving and decision-making from a very young age is considered crucial to this approach. The students at the Abbas Sayyed Ahmed school are involved in the daily planning of their lessons and activities, with an emphasis on applying what they learn in the classroom to the real world and their everyday lives. The teachers at the school use this open, interactive atmosphere to talk to the kids about issues that affect them, like early marriage for the girls and female genital mutilation (FGM), and try to involve them in finding ways to solve these problems. One of the main government agencies involved in the school project is the National Council for Motherhood and Childhood, and on a visit to the Abbas Sayyed Ahmed school, the agency's director Mushira Khattab explained their mission. "And also the system we have now in the school listens to the girls if they have a problem, and participates in solving the girl's problem. And that is very important. You have girls here who are 15 years and 16 years old, and their families have decided to marry them off and withdraw them from school. The whole class will discuss this problem and make an effort with the family to delay the marriage slightly in order to give the girl a chance to study. You don't see that in government schools," she said. Abbas Sayyed Ahmed is one of 119 schools that have already been built in the Buheira governorate, and the number is supposed to increase to 144 by the year's end. It is all part of the government's ambitious project to create parity in terms of educational opportunities between the sexes by 2015.

ITN Source | August 31, 2007

Tags:. .cairo. .menya. .distinguished. .wherever. .ambitious