Success Stories from Our Members in the field

Partnership With Egypt Yields Results for Girls Education, CARE

Then remote Fayoum and Sohag districts along the Nile Valley are among of the poorest regions in Egypt -- so isolated that children there do not have access to government educational resources and services

In the late 1990s, the American nongovernmental organization CARE began working with the Egyptian Ministry of Education to set up small schools to improve basic education and reach underserved children, particularly girls.

With limited money for school fees and traditional restrictions limiting girls' mobility, families often place a low priority on their education, with only 2 percent completing secondary school in these remote areas.

Through CARE's program in Egypt, called Community Action in Support of Education, 38 small primary schools have been established in 20 rural communities in Fayoum and Sohag districts. More than 1,140 girls have now gained access to basic education, and another 950 children between the ages of three and six have received early education in 38 development centers.

The schools have been successful in large part because CARE mobilized the community - local women's groups and development associations - to plan, coordinate and implement activities for the schools. The community, in turn, has donated spaces for small schools.

Having decided in 2002 that the program was self-sufficient, CARE began transferring responsibility over it to the Egyptian government and a newly formed association of community groups, called the Educational Network.

This program in rural Egypt is American nongovernmental organizations at their best: focused, accountable, effective and building the kind of self-sufficiency that allows local partners to continue long after their U.S. partners depart.