19 January 2007

Cairo, Egypt: UN Volunteers in Egypt is trying to give voice to this organization thinking that their appeal is very interesting and worthwhile.

From the Hope Village Society:

 

“Dear friends,

Please allow me to give you an idea about Hope Village Society, and what we believe we can achieve if we all work together in the face of this terrible shame of seeing the children of Egypt on the street:

Allow me to introduce you to the way we at Hope Village work, so that we can open knew doors for voluntary work:

1.      Street research, done by our social workers trying to find the children and gain their trust.

2.      Two mobile units.

3.      Reception centers: (where the children spend the whole day after which they go back to the street, this is the most important stage of our rehabilitation program, it is here that we work socially and psychologically with the child in order to prepare him/her to leave the street and give up its addictive freedom for a stable and safe future:

1. Imbaba center for girls.
2. Rod el farag center for boys.
3. Elsayeda zeinab center for boys.
4. El Haggana center for girls and boys (of a younger age bracket).

4.      Temporary shelters:

a.      Mokkatam. (boys)

b.      Toub ramly. (girls).

c.       Gisr El suez. (boys).

5.      Permanent shelters:

1. 10th of Ramadan (boys).
2. 10th of Ramadan (girls).
3. 10th of Ramadan (young mothers).
4. Nasr city (boys).

6.      Workshops:

I.       Teaching workshops:

                Plumbing, painting, electricity, carpentry.

II.      Productive workshops:

          a. Candle making.

          b. Bamboo products.

          c. Beads and jewelry making.

          d. Hand made carpets.

          e. Hand made kleams.

          f. Sewing.

          g. Carpentry.

7.      Green houses.

8.      Ready made food products.

The aim behind this invitation:

We received a wonderful response to our campaign throughout the past few months to increase awareness, and gain new volunteers, and we hope to be able to use your trust, and your willingness to help and to organize it the best possible way in order to help our children.

We believe that our children (street children), have a lot to offer you, and that this kind of relationship will be very giving to both parties, in addition we’re sure that our work at Hope Village will be positively affected.

We hope you can be our ambassadors in the society, and that you will be able to transmit to your family and friends a clearer view of the truth about street children, and might help to protect us all from a bleak future that grows with each day these children spend on the streets.

How can you help us??

1.      Forming support groups for each of the reception centers, these support groups are each formed of a group of volunteers, who agree on a weekly schedule by which each member is responsible for a day during which he/she spends a few hours on that day, and uses this time in whatever way he/she find best, in order to interact with the children at the center, through:

·        Forming friendships with the children.

·        Art work (drawing, painting, clay, beads…..).

·        Scientific, or entertaining shows.

·        Organizing trips.

·        Organizing parties.

·        Teaching cooking.

·        Board games.

Please feel free to use your imagination, and your sense to find out what you think would be the best way to relate to the kids.

During the year of 2005 we started the support group for Imbaba, and this lovely group of ladies was able together to cover the whole week, each coming on the day most suitable for her and spending a few hours with the girls. A monthly meeting was done to discuss the work done during the past month, and to brain storm for ideas by which to improve the work. The effect of these new relationships on the girls were beautiful, and the effect on the employees was very enriching. (this kind of work is of course not limited to ladies, in fact we find that male volunteers are very important in order to provide a positive male figure in the kids’ lives, a paternal or fraternal relationship that most of them have never felt).

2.      Helping out at one of our temporary or permanent centers:

·        A one to one, or a one to group relationship with one or more of the children, giving them a friendship, maternal, paternal, fraternal, … relationship, that might be very difficult to develop with one of the social workers (SW) due to practical reasons (big responsibility, big number of children per SW), or due to the need for an authoritarian figure.

·        Helping out with home works.

·        Arranging trips, parties.

·        Working on drama, art works (I am working on arranging a yearly performance +/- exhibition at El Sawy cultural wheel, or the Hanager for example).

 3.      Workshops: we are working hard on new products, artistic designs, quality, and marketing of our products, if you can help in any way please give us a hand:

·        We need a quality control officer to be employed full time at the society to observe the work of all our workshops, but we are having great difficulty finding one, in addition we are open to anyone who is willing to take responsibility checking the quality of one or more of our products.

·        We are in constant need of new ideas and design, often related to an event (X-mas, Easter, Valentine’s, mother’s day…), we can work on each product separately (candles, beads, bamboo, wood, sewing….etc), or we can try to combine them.

·        We need a marketing team, it is difficult for us to be present at all bazaars, and events, although we do try, it is also a very irregular, non consistent way of marketing our products. We believe that if we could arrange a marketing team at each club, university, school, even big malls, made up of a group of 4-5 young people willing to give up some of their time, we could be present at all these places at least two days a week (week days for places of study, week ends for places of leisure and shopping). We can help with the initiation of the project, provided they make the primary arrangements with the place, then we hope that this group will be able to train others and ensure sustainability.

·        Marketing can also be done through mailing lists, which is the way many people have already got to know us by.

4.     Green houses: our green houses are facing quite many problems regarding productivity, cost effectiveness, and marketing, till now it has been a teaching project rather than an income to the society, if you can help us add, and implement new ideas (flower growing, exotic vegetables, fruits….) that might help us compete better in the market.

5.      Ready meals: we have a production line of ready-made meals, that needs ideas, and marketing.

6.      List of professional voluntary work:

We are working on a list for doctors of variable specialties, lawyers, architects, teachers, police officers, graphic designers, marketing, etc.., any one who is willing to help out professionally whenever we might face a situation, so please sign up with name, profession, office hours, address, and telephone number, so that we can come back to you in case we need it. Please tell others who are willing so we can have list that covers most of our needs.

7.      Publishing a magazine to be edited by the children of the society:

We are now starting a project with Mr. Mahmoud Askalany, a journalist, we are working on producing a magazine (we hope it can be monthly), in which our children help in editing, it will deal primarily with the problem of street children, but will also be a literary, and artistic window for children form the society and from outside, there will also be articles for adults. We hope to be able to attract some real big names in the field of journalism and we will need help editing, and distributing the magazine.

8.      We need a group working on public awareness;

This can be done through arranging lectures, social events, distributing articles, and sports events.

Our public relations department is really over worked, they could need a lot of help with making cards, sending mails, ideas for broadening our network of contacts, and volunteers, so please feel free to share any of your ideas well as the department of research, so if you know of someone, please tell us, we need good caliber people, who have knowledge of English language and computer skills, in addition to a humane attitude towards others.

We are very grateful for your interest and your trust, and we promise to try to work together to ensure utmost benefit from your ideas and time.

Please fell free to contact me:

Hanna Aboulghar

haboulghar@gmail.com

Our contact:

Guitar Zaki:

Guitarzakie@yahoo.co.uk

Ahmed Amir:

a_amir_elmahdy@yahoo.com

again we thank you and look forward to working together to help these children to a better future.”

Hope you can help them on this!!!