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Public Awareness Program to Improve the Environment in the Northern Part of Cairo Governorate

Goal

As the title of the program suggests, it aims at raising public awareness about environmental issues in the northern districts of Cairo. For this, it depends on the concepts of rights, citizenship, participation, and the achievement of sustainable human development.

Time Span

The program’s activities started on May 15, 2004 and ended on February 28, 2006. A connected revolving loan program started on August 1, 2005 and ended on December 31, 2006.
The program was fully implemented on schedule.

Geographical scope

The program will be implemented in the north of Cairo, in seven districts: Sharabiya, Shubra, Rod el-Farag, al-Sahel, Qobba Gardens, Zeitoun, and al-Zawiya al-Hamra.

Target Group(s)

The Public Awareness Program reached out to the communities of the seven districts involved and their leaders.

Objectives

The program aims to:

Raise awareness in selected neighbourhoods about environmental, social, and health issues.
Train teachers and pupils to protect the environment in these selected neighbourhoods.
Implement a program to combat illiteracy and teach life skills to girls and women, while also raising awareness about social, environmental, and health issues that could negatively effect the development of local communities.

Achievements

Several successes were obtained in several fields:

Training: the training component of the program included 300 workshops and seminars, field visits focusing on environmental protection, teacher training at 97 schools, and the introduction of “active learning,” an innovative training methodology for eradicating illiteracy. 40 field researchers received capacity building trainings to carry out a survey in the area.
Publicity: within the framework of the program there were 241 awareness-raising campaigns which comprised the distribution of environmental stories to students and teachers as well as 5.000 brochures, 2.000 posters, CD-ROMs, and various environmentally friendly products.
Education: the program organized 21 environmental camps; it held a Green Corner Competition organized for schools in the district; and applied the “active learning” method to teach 790 girls and women to read and write.
Environment: a Green Belt was established in the area, including some 3.400 trees that were newly planted.
Rotating loans: in cooperation with the NGOs Islamic Flag and Islamic Union, the program granted loans to approximately 1.200 families in al-Zawiya al-Hamra.
A social survey was carried out in the Northern Cairo district with a representative sample of 10% of its inhabitants.

Challenges

The program was also faced with a number of challenges:

Few women got involved in the civil and social activities;
Neighbourhood leaders who rejected the objectives of the program were excluded, so as not to raise confusion among the neighbourhoods of the northern district, especially regarding sensitive issues such as female genital mutilation and the health of girl and boy adolescents;
Only a small number of imams and priests chose to participate;
Education for women and girls was not perceived as useful in the long term;
Most NGOs suffered from weaknesses and lacked expertise in the area of revolving loans.

Partner(s)

This program is implemented in cooperation with:

the Society for the Protection of the Environment from Pollution,
and the Arab Company for the Environment