Last week Caritas-Egypt signed a grant contract with the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ) according to which GIZ will fund Caritas-Egypt’s “Youth Making Change”, under the umbrella of GIZ’s Equal Opportunities and Social Development Project (EOSD).
The project, which runs in Egypt from 2022 to 2024, is operated in conjunction with Egypt’s Ministry of Social Solidarity (MoSS) and Ministry of Youth and Sports, and looks to engage the social participation of youth, especially young women and people with disabilities.
Caritas Egypt will implement its “Youth Making Change” project with 13 grassroots associations, over 15 months. The project aims to reach 8,000 to 10,000 people of both genders including persons with disabilities between the ages of 15 and 29, in 13 villages in Qena and Assiut in the south of Egypt, and Port-Said on the Suez Canal’s northern Mediterranean tip.
As per the objectives of the EOSD project, Caritas’s Youth Making Change, aims to educate its target groups about their general health, reproductive and social rights, and how to eliminate discrimination, violence and inequality. The project also aims at encouraging the target groups to actively participate in the development of their local communities.
The project activities include building capacity of civil society members and leaders operating in the 13 villages, as well as raising the awareness of the youth including persons with disabilities and their families about issues related to health, reproductive rights, and rejection of violence and discrimination. These issues will include female genital mutilation, children marriage, inter-family marriages and domestic violence.
The project will also provide safe spaces for girls to enable them to participate in community development and sports activities without violence or discrimination. Facilitators will also be in charge of preparing potential leaders from university youth, to ensure the continuity of the project activities and to spearhead community initiatives.
Caritas Egypt is a public utility organisation, registered with the Egyptian Ministry of Social Solidarity; it is affiliated to Caritas Internationalis Confederation. Caritas Egypt collaborates actively with many non-governmental organisations to promote and support the Egyptian government initiatives in the field of development, to serve and educate more than half a million beneficiaries, 80 per cent of whom are women, and to provide activities and services to the population in the most deprived and slum areas in Cairo, Lower and Upper Egypt governorates.
Caritas Egypt has been active in Egypt for the past 56 years.
Watani International
16 May 2023
