CAIRO - The bus screeched to a halt outside the school, raising a huge cloud of dust. The guests got off and walked into the little, two-class community school, while the excited children start singing: "Welcome, welcome... A happy day to you... We are happy to see you." The children are from poor families in the Upper Egyptian Governorate of Sohag, about 300 miles (500km) or one hour by plane from Cairo. It's a preparatory school, designed for children who've passed the ordinary preparatory school age. It's one of a number of community schools established by NGOs. Each class contains four big tables, surrounded by chairs, with children of both sexes sitting beside each other. Pieces of cardboard have been attached to the four walls, with pieces of paper attached to them, on which are written statements stressing the importance of education, as well as some mathematical formulae and basic rules of Arabic grammar. Wafaa Hassan, one of the pupils at the school, was astonished when a camera crew and journalists burst into their class. "My father trades in crops. My mother stays at home," said Wafaa (15), in the Sa'idi (Upper Egyptian) Arabic dialect, which has some similarities to standard Arabic and Gulf Arabic. Wafaa, in the fifth grade of preparatory school, is the oldest pupil in her class; one would normally expect a girl of her age to have reached the elementary phase. "My father refused to let me go to school. Every morning, I would see the neighbours' children going off to school, but my father said that we didn't have money," said Wafaa, wearing a black headscarf. She and many other children in Sohag, Egypt's poorest governorate, don't always get anything for breakfast. “In my family, you sometimes have to fight if you want any food,” she explained. Wafaa, who has six sisters and a brother, said that they're all now being educated at community schools, except the youngest, because she's still only a baby. "We love school. I want to be a doctor one day," she added, smiling. It is the poverty of these Upper Egyptian families that prevents their children from getting an education. The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is playing a role in eliminating this poverty by implementing food-for-education activities in Sohag, in partnership with the governorate and the Ministry of Education. Last week, the WFP and the Governor of Sohag kicked off the third phase of the soft drink and snack food giant PepsiCo funded food-for-education project, that aims to boost school attendance rates and combat child malnutrition in the Upper Egyptian governorate. PepsiCo and the WFP started their partnership in 2007, to contribute through funding and awareness-raising to the WFP's Food for Education Programme. The programme, which supports pupils who are faced with the choice between getting food or getting an education, also contributes to reducing poverty and food insecurity in Upper Egypt. "This project is a model for how strategic partnerships like the one between WFP, Sohag Governorate, the private sector and the Ministry of Education can combat poverty and malnutrition among school-age children," said Wadah el-Hamzawi, the Governor of Sohag. PepsiCo Tomooh's grant of US$200,000 is used to purchase a school snack of fortified date bars produced by Egyptian factories, which constitutes 25 per cent of the recommended dietary intake of a child. The midday snack is enriched by minerals and vitamin A to improve children's concentration and school performance. "We are indeed proud to invest in the nutrition and education of children who are the future of this country," said Adel Garas, General Manager of the North East Africa Business Unit for PepsiCo. He added that the children receive a monthly take-home ration of 10kg of rice, which is an incentive for poorer families to encourage them to send their children to school regularly. "WFP's food-for-education projects are part of our five-year country programme that aims at improving the nutritional status of the most vulnerable Egyptians, especially women and children in the poorest areas of Upper Egypt," explained Gianpietro Bordignon, the WFP Representative and Country Director in Egypt "This is not charity work, it's community work for the development of Egypt," he said. This joint partnership has helped more than 2,600 of the most vulnerable children and their families – a total of some 13,000 people in Sohag Governorate – covering 84 schools in the Dar el-Salam, Geheina and Saqulta districts. Also at the same event, Chipsy, affiliated to Pepsico, contributed LE1 million to cover another 30 schools. "From the next month, an ad will be put on every product from Chipsy, saying that a part of the profit will be contributed to the education of vulnerable children, in co-operation with the WFP," said Tareq Mansour, the General Manager at Chipsy Foods Industries. He added that the company will also organise a big TV advertising campaign “to encourage other big companies to contribute to developing their society”. "These snacks and the monthly take-home ration of 10kg of rice is considered to be a 'compression method' to get poor families to let their children go to school," said Zeinab el-Sayyed, a teacher at the school, who wears Niqab (the full-face veil). "They have to send their children to school so they can eat the snacks and bring the rice home,” she told this newspaper. Zeinab, who graduated from the Faculty of Arts, Sohag University and has worked at this school since 2000, said that, over the years, she had, regrettably, witnessed many children dropping out of school for a variety of reasons. "Some parents pull their daughters out of school when they reach puberty, because they're worried they'll get harassed. At harvest time, many boys don't go to school because they have to help their fathers with the harvesting," added Zeinab, who teaches mathematics and English. "We [the teachers] try to convince the parents about how wrong it is if they prevent their children from getting an education; sometimes they listen, sometimes they don't." In Sohag, children dropping out of school isn't the only problem, as many older people are very poor because they cannot find work. There are only a few sites of archaeological interest in Sohag, which is why tourism represents but a small portion of the city's income. Other sources of income include trade, and small industries for carpets, furniture, spinning and weaving, and sugar. Administrative and educational services are two big sectors for income, as a small university there employs a lot of the residents. In February 2010, a new highway linking the city to the Red Sea city of Hurghada was opened, facilitating movement between Upper Egypt and the Red Sea coastal region. In May 2010, former president Hosni Mubarak inaugurated a brand-new airport to serve the city, called (at the time) Mubarak International Airport. El-Hamzawi, the Governor of Sohag, would like Egyptian businessmen, especially those originally from Sohag, to take a greater interest in their birthplace. "There are many opportunities for investment here, but no-one comes," he complained. “Another problem is that about 30 per cent of the Egyptians who have fled home to Egypt from the violence in Libya are from Sohag and they're gradually trickling home. Where are they meant to find work? "We are working to entice foreign investors to come here and open factories. We need a lot of investment to upgrade the status of families in Sohag," the Governor said hopefully.
