Every time the topic of the disabled in Egypt is raised it becomes obvious that the only people interested in probing the issue are those who directly suffer from the problem—meaning the disabled themselves and their families and friends. Only those in close contact with disabled persons are interested in seeing them become productive members in the community instead of being a perpetual burden. As for the mainstream, it appears as though it just couldn’t be bothered.
A recent two-day event that tackled the role of the media towards persons with disabilities, held by the NGO Village of Hope for Development and Rehabilitation of persons with intellectual disabilities in Alexandria, touched a raw nerve as it attempted to put the media before its responsibility in raising public awareness of the plight of the disabled in Egypt.
“Were it not for CIDA’s PDP”
Nada Thabet, founder of the Alexandria-based Village of Hope opened the seminar by treating the audience to a briefing on the village and the NGO which now bears its name. She reminded that the Village of Hope came into existence some ten years ago when Ms Thabet herself was faced with the predicament of the almost non-existence of any body in Egypt to help her mentally challenged boy. She said that the main mission of the Hope Village was to provide a convenient climate for mentally challenged young people whose share of human rights in Egypt is next to negligible. Ms Thabet highlighted the key role played by the Canadian Participatory Development Program (PDP) of the Canadian and its support to the Village, which took place in two phases. “We would never have been where we are today,” Ms Thabet said, “were it not for the PDP”.
The first phase of the Canadian project involved, over a five-year plan, achieving basic structural changes while training the staff at the Village of Hope. “The project allowed us to make a gigantic leap into the future,” Ms Thabet said. “We moved from being a small charity to being a fully fledged institution. We advanced form meeting day to day needs to setting clear goals and targets to be met in the future.”
Direly needed
The second phase of the Canadian project saw the establishment of a centre in Rushdi Street in Alexandria, Ms Thabet said, for development and rehabilitation of young people with special needs. The centre also offers direly needed support and aid to the families of disabled persons; families which more often than not find themselves alone in having to deal with the predicament and pain of having to care for and educate disabled sons or daughters. Among the valuable services offered by the centre is the issuing of IDs for disabled persons, as well as the certificates of the exemption of disabled young men from military service. Obtaining this certificate usually involved, under normal circumstances, an arduous procedure that inflicted unspeakable pain and humiliation on the young men and their families.
Ms Manal Maher al-Gamiel, the project officer of PDP’s Child Protection Development Facility, then took the microphone and enlightened the attendants on the role of the Canadian programme which carried the Village of Hope so far. She praised the collaboration of the Village staff in resolving whatever problems that cropped up in the path of implementing the programme, and for meticulously abiding by the conditions of PDP.
Live experience
Following a short tea break two persons who had famously challenged their disabilities spoke of their experiences. Omar Ibrahim, who has severe speech and motion impairment, spoke of the difficulty he confronted with the traditional educational system which is unable to accommodate special needs. He particularly asked for the option of taking exams and answering them through computers in case of those who suffer from motion or hearing and speech disabilities.
The writer of these lines, who has been visually impaired since early childhood, spoke of her experience in the Giza boarding school for the blind, revealing how the inmates suffered because of the supervisors’ lack of pedagogical and psychological awareness. She complained of the scarcity of books printed in Braille and the unaccommodating educational environment in universities. She said how she had wished so hard to study journalism, only to discover the department was closed to the visually impaired. Not to be outdone, however, she followed her dream after graduation by training—and excelling—at Watani. Another dream which came true at Watani was to create a paper for the blind, and hence Watani Braille, which is five years old today and whose managing editor is Sherifa Massoud, was born.
State role
Ms Massoud went on to outline the problems confronted by disabled persons in finding jobs. True, she said, the law grants them a 5 per cent tax-exempted quota on the payroll of any work entity, but employers usually employ disabled persons to fill this quota, ask them for no work to do and just pay them minimum wage at the end of every month. Many employers believe they are being kind to the disabled in behaving thus but, with plenty of energy and abilities, the disabled feel frustrated at doing no constructive work while the community at large misses their contribution.
With this in mind, Ms Massoud said, she has now joined a project which trains the visually impaired and helps place them in specific jobs. The project is funded by the Sawiris Foundation for Social Development and Orascom Telecom. The project has also set up a pre-school nursery for visually impaired children to prepare them to integrate in normal schools later.
Not aliens
Alaa’ Sebei, programme manager at the UK-based Save the Children foundation, was then invited to open the discussion on the plight of the disabled and on how the media could advance their cause. Dr Sebei began by drawing attention to the fact that there are at least some ten million disabled people in Egypt, the wide majority of whom are denied basic rights. Here, he said, the State ought to step in and shoulder the burden. Once a disabled child is born, he said, he should be granted a life pension since his or her family stands to incur countless extra expenses on the disability head. And though the child has need for much more medical care than a healthy child, he or she are not covered by any medical insurance—a predicament which the State also has to resolve. Disabled persons, Dr Sebei said, ought to find a rightful place in our society instead of being regarded as aliens.
Considering that more work needs to be done by the State, Sherine Khalil of the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood promptly explained that the government is indeed interested in enacting proper legislation and putting in place more adequate policies to benefit the disabled. “It is an ongoing process,” Ms Khalil said.
For her part, writer Sumaya Aresha strongly agreed that the State ought to step in. She later wrote on the website www.ahewar.org calling for the foundation of a national council for the rights of the disabled, to concern itself primarily with this issue.
Bottom end of the queue
It was then up to the media persons to talk of their predicament where the issue of disability is concerned. Nihad Saleh, a reporter at the Cairo daily State-owned Al-Ahram, bemoaned the working environment at many Egyptian papers. This environment, she said, does not favour covering material about disabilities or disabled persons, on grounds that such material is less newsworthy or of inferior interest to readers. “I have been covering stories on that topic,” Ms Saleh said, “for some 14 years now. In the main part, events concerned with the disabled include almost the same faces, implying a heart-breaking lack of interest in the topic by the wider public. This reflects in the media; every time I write a story on the disabled I go back to my office to find that my story stands at a severe disadvantage vis-à-vis other more ‘interesting’ stories. My editor invariably pushes the disability story to the end of the queue of material waiting for time and space to be printed.” Sadly, it turned out Ms Saleh’s predicament was not unique; many other reporters had similar stories to tell. She stunned the attendants when she said: “The media people themselves need better awareness of the issue,” –-exactly the role the media was required to play: to raise public awareness.
Hala Mahfouz, an announcer on national TV’s Channel 5 couldn’t agree more. She told the participants of her first experience with disability; as a child her neighbour and close friend succumbed to a severe hearing disability following a childhood illness. Mahfouz was devastated. She dedicated her life to helping her friend and, later, when she became a TV announcer she made it her life mission to offer a programme in sign language for the benefit of all who suffered form hearing or speech disabilities. Sadly, she said, those in charge of the channel persist in scheduling her programme hours of minimal viewing.
In our interest
The problem with disability topics, according to Samia Sidhom editor of Watani International, is that they appear to concern no-one. Disabled persons are almost entirely the concern of their families and friends; anyone who requires proof of this needs only look around to discover first-hand that the wide majority of bodies concerned with the disabled have been founded by people closely related to the disabled. “We need to convey to the community at large that helping the disabled to become productive, fruitful members would effectively benefit the entire community and relieve it of the huge ethical, moral and financial burden of ‘caring’ for the disabled,” she said. “It should be clear that granting the disabled their rights is in the interest of all of us. We all stand to gain.” And this, obviously, is a message none but the media can strongly convey.
“Persons with disabilities are not the handicapped people they are frequently made to be,” Soheir Abdel-Fattah of the Arab Council for Childhood and Development said. She informed the attendants that December will see a conference on disabled children in the Arab World.
When invited to give his opinion, Mohamed al-Meslamani of Dream satellite channel said he believed the gathering of so many media people in one place to discuss the issue of the rights of the disabled meant that the media was more than doing its bit. He cast doubts, though, on the figures cited on the number of the disabled in Egypt, saying these figures were probably exaggerated. But this argument did not sit well with the attendants, who argued that the real figures were probably higher than the ones cited, since many people in rural areas never reported having a disabled child in the first place. The prevalent culture is, sadly, that a disabled child is a disgrace the family needs to hide.
United we stand
The discussions clearly revealed that a lot of work needs to be done on the disability front, with the purpose of engaging the entire community in the cause. The final recommendations focused on elaborating a comprehensive plan for the media to tackle this issue, seeking finance for awareness campaigns, producing films and documentaries on persons with disabilities, having disabled persons themselves act in these films, and using sign language extensively for the benefit of those with hearing disabilities.
The second day saw some 2500 children and young people with various disabilities gather for a carnival at the hall of Alexandria Stadium. The youngsters were brimming with enthusiasm; their happiness as they entered the court for the processional was contagious. They were definitely the stars of the day.
It was moving to see all the happy young people of different ages, gender, and religion, stand together as the national anthem was playing. Then followed the various speeches and shows. The visually-impaired young women of al-Nur (Light) School started the shows with a stunning performance of a varied repertoire that included traditional, folkloric, and patriotic Egyptian songs. They even surprised the audience with a rendition of the ABBA’s Chiquitita which had everyone swaying to the tune in glee. Other shows included Nubian dancing, children’s songs, and musical sketches.
As the lovely day came to an end, the thought came to mind that while so many issues divided Egyptians to the point of pitting some of them against each other, the cause of the disabiled was able to gather them together in love, hope, and a common purpose.