A challenege Overview
Introduction and the Challenge:
According to the National Council of Childhood and Motherhood (NCCM), 93% of Egyptian children aged one-14 year old suffer from violence. The UNICEF study, “Violence Against Children in Egypt,” found that 66% of children interviewed (aged 13-17) suffer from physical violence, more than one in three students experience bullying on a regular basis, 78% of respondents have suffered from emotional violence, and almost all girls surveyed reported having experienced sexual harassment. In 2017, the Thomson Reuters Foundation Poll ranked Cairo as the worst megacity in the world in terms of women’s safety.
Numerous studies have shown that violence against children has detrimental effects on family structures, community cohesion, and educational advancement and that this violence tends to be repeated.
The Heya Masr programs are based on research-based techniques in behavioral development. The program’s trained facilitators offer classes and workshops in order for the youth to build their self-confidence, and develop and strengthen their characters in a nurturing, safe environment. The curriculum teaches children the importance of physical activity, nutrition, a healthy lifestyle, character development, bullying awareness, sexual harassment awareness, and self-defense training in order to address the major issues plagued by youth today. In addition to youth services, Heya Masr also offers parenting programs and rehabilitation training. To fully actualize the mission of eradicating inequality and promoting good mental and physical health for all Egyptian citizens.
Heya Masr was founded in 2014 with the mission of reducing gender gaps by empowering young Egyptian women; mainly by addressing sexual harassment, bullying, and gender-based violence. According to USAID, Egypt ranks low in gender equality, currently measuring at 136 out of 145 countries. Heya Masr began by empowering young women ages six-18 to develop self-worth through character development.
Heya Masr Programs
Heya Masr intervention:
A guide to inter-agency working to safeguard and promote the welfare of children addressed the fact that a child-centered approach is fundamental to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of every child. A child-centered approach means keeping the child in focus when making decisions about their lives and working in partnership with them and their families. Moreover, understanding what happened and why things happened can improve children’s responses in the future.
Heya Masr adopted the child approach to achieve child protection and prevent violence against children and women by developing the child’s character through processing tools and skills that enable them to protect themselves from the aforementioned types of physical and psychological harm and restore their dignity and self-worth. End generation recycles trauma and abuse. Moreover, Heya Masr works with parents and educators to raise their awareness with positive growth methods to meet their children’s needs.
If children attain the knowledge, skills, and ability to make their reality better, make their own choices, and participate in decision-making processes, their characters are developed.
The council curriculum inspired Heya Masr to develop its own curriculum and based on WHO overview in its research on “Violence Prevention the evidence, preventing violence by developing life skills in children and adolescents” on developing children’s skills to face violence.
Shedding light on Heya Masr and its program, we started executing the program in summer 2014 by working on classes’ materials and activities. The program is divided into three levels, a 6 months program; each level lasts for 2 months.
The program is divided into three main focus: Character building, Nutrition healthy habits, sexual harassment awareness, and two additional days for basic self-defense training classes that run to a total of 8-10 hours. We end each level with a graduation ceremony to encourage the participants for their commitment and reward them.
In the last two years, we kicked off programs to include boys within the same age (6-18) years old and added a parent program.
In Heya Masr, we are concerned with the quality more than the quantity; the ideal class number is with a range of 12-15 participants with an average of 3 training due to the heavy activities used to encourage engagement and participation.
Path One: A no fee-based path to run classes of 15 participants, each with Heya Masr volunteer teachers. The classes will take place on the weekend, either Fridays or Saturdays.
Path Two: This is a new project, “Heya Masr Academy.” It is a fee-based path to get any entity’s teachers trained and able to run classes and to use our Heya Masr program curriculums. Heya Masr will provide the training and monitor the classes’ performance and collect assessments periodically.
Most of the activities depend on stationary materials and data show presentations, video games, and fun activities in all classes. The cost of the stationary materials would be the organization’s responsibility, in addition to the cost that could be applied to executing the training for volunteers in path 2.
Measurement and Evaluations (M&E)
Heya Masr to appoint monitoring and evaluation staff to perform the following: This could be outsourced to an external contractor.
- Conduct a baseline for each participant at the beginning of the project by carrying out personality tests and creativity tests
- Monitoring and Evaluation of trainers and facilitators
- Monitoring and evaluations for all activities to confirm schedule and compliance.
- Participants Behaviors Modification and progress tracking
- Participants engagement weekly challenges after the sessions to apply
- Database analysis for each youngster and facilitator
- Conduct a survey from all participants (youngster and parent) on our program
- Final reporting on engagement, behavior changes, and leadership skills
- Technical and financial reports will be prepared at the closing stage.
Program to the underprivileged- Parents
Educate to Empower
- Gender equality awareness
- Harassment and Bullying Awareness
- Child marriage and FGM-Early child marriage
- Health and Nutrition
- Positive parenting
Our belief is if the mothers are educated on the significance of gender equality, nutrition, early child
marriage, bullying & sexual harassment’s danger, they will be empowered to invest in educating their
children, impacting their future positively for generations to come.