The streets of Cairo are full of children without shelter. They are to be seen begging during traffic jams or nagging pedestrians for something to eat. Sometimes they engage in street fights or steal from people. There is, however, one initiative that is trying to keep these children off the streets and train them for future jobs. This is called the Atfal Ad Al-Hayat (Children and the Challenges of Life) project run by the Resala charity organisation. Wafaa Mohamed, supervisor of the Atfal Ad Al-Hayat Mosaddaq branch, talks about transforming a street child into a hard-working citizen. “There are two kinds of street children: those working in the streets who have homes to go back to and those who have no shelter at all and sleep and eat in the streets and of course have no domestic supervision.” The project started in 2007, she says, when the first branch of Atfal Ad Al-Hayat was established in Helwan. Her own branch, the Mosaddaq one, was inaugurated in September 2012. “We are concerned with children without shelter whose ages range from four to 18,” Mohamed says. “We organise field campaigns which scan the streets for the places street children gather. We guide the children we find to the nearest branch of the organisation. We aim to rehabilitate the children and reunite them with their families. We send them to our reception department, which explores the familial circumstances of the children and may even visit the children's original homes. The department aims to listen to the children and to try to solve their problems.” It is through the reception department's educational, religious and cultural committees that Atfal Ad Al-Hayat volunteers aim to help integrate children into society. “The educational committee supervises the education of the children and helps them to enroll in school or return to it in cases of drop-outs,” Mohamed says. It organises lessons to help the children catch up with others of the same age. Children from the ages of nine to 14 go to what is called a “social class” in which they study for the primary stage examination in three years and are given a certificate that enables them to move on to the preparatory stage. As for children aged 15 to 18, they study to take the Mahw Al-Ommeya (classes for adults who were deprived of education) certificate. Their educational level is determined after an exam given during the first five days of the children's arrival. “Volunteers in this department behave like parents as they help the children to study all week round and even the day before the exams,” adds Mohamed. “There is also the religious committee, which teaches children the basics of religion and how to deal with others. We also have a cultural group in which films and cartoons are screened for the children to watch.” The most important committee of all, however, is probably the skills committee, in which children are taught skills like printing, drawing and colouring, as well as crafts like making leather products and writing Arabic letters on glass. These items are then sold at craft fairs, all the money raised going to the children. “We also organise practical job-training opportunities for children aged 16 to 18 who would like to be apprentices in factories to enroll in future jobs,” says Mohamed. Among the fields they train children in are manufacturing leather products like shoes and bags, making sweets, food packaging and fixing mechanical items. So far, Atfal Ad Al-Hayat has organised 14 craft fairs. There are other committees that run activities to entertain the children as an incentive to participate in classes. These include the sports committee, which teaches them different sports like football and self-defence as well as the ethics of sports. There is also a trips committee that organises field trips to the Pyramids or fun fairs. “We also organise parties for the children and give awards for those with the best attitude and conduct. There are also the food and clothing committee and the awareness and public relations committee, which enrolls volunteers and raises awareness on how to treat street children. There is a volunteers committee that gives courses for volunteers to teach them how to deal with the children,” Mohamed comments. Atfal Ad Al-Hayat even helps to support the families of the children until they are able to become financially independent. “If the parents need a job, we provide them with opportunities to start their own projects in addition to food and medicine,” Mohamed explains. The organisation follows the children's progress to make sure they do not go back to their old habits. “One year on, we visit a child's home and make sure that even if the child has finished his courses with us his parents have not kicked him out again or he has not dropped out of school.” In addition, Atfal Ad Al-Hayat provides children with food, clothes and a place to stay the night in what it calls its “shelter house.” This has strict rules, and smoking and fighting are forbidden. If a child breaks the rules, he could miss out on a field trip, for example. “No child should be told off, however. The children are not working for us. We are training them for future jobs. No pictures can be taken of the children unless they approve,” Mohamed adds. According to the statistics of the organisation, the number of newcomers to Atfal Ad Al-Hayat was 217 in 2013-2014. The number of children suffering from family problems that were admitted to the shelter house was 66 in the same year, and these have now been reunited with their families. The number of science lessons given to the children in the year was 1,115. The number of religious lessons was 264. There were 12 workshops in which children were taught crafts and made products that were sold in fairs organised by the organisation. “Our main problem is the attitude of the leaders of the street children, who often send them out to work in the streets, which is the opposite of what we are trying to teach them,” Mohamed says. H.B, 18, had been on the streets for some time when he met volunteers from Atfal Ad Al-Hayat a year-and-a-half ago. “I don't know anything about my father. The last time I heard about him was when I was two years old. My parents are divorced, and my mother works nearby. I first met a volunteer from Atfal Ad Al-Hayat who told me he would help me and gave me a lift to the organisation's branch here. I have learned a lot here. I have learnt how to behave. I have learnt how to deal with the situations I face. I have now been working as a baker's apprentice for five months,” he said. No governmental institution has really dealt with the cause of street children, but there have been some attempts to solve at least part of the problem. In August 2009, the Ministry of Housing and Population announced the inauguration of a safe house for street children in Maadi and Basateen as a temporary home for children in danger. In 2010, the governorate of Cairo announced that it had earmarked land in the Al-Darrasa district for children with no shelter. In 2011, Faiza Abul-Naga, the then minister of planning and international co-operation, announced the launch of a project called “A Safer Environment for Children” in co-operation with the Italian Debt Exchange Committee. The project cost LE4.3 million and aimed to make grants to the families of street children to start new projects and help them in their lives. According to a study entitled “The Types and Causes of Street Children Trafficking” issued in 2011 by sociologist Azza Karim of the National Centre for Social and Criminological Research, 62 per cent of street children prefer to stay on the streets because of the domestic abuse they are subjected to at home, like being beaten by their fathers or stepmothers. The study said that the children were sometimes used by gangs to steal or sell drugs or even sell their blood or body parts in exchange for shelter or money. Another paper issued by Karim in 2009 warned of an increase in the number of offences that some street children were engaged in. Some 56 per cent of street children were likely to become thieves, it said, and 13.9 per cent could become beggars. Of the street children in Cairo, Giza, Menia and Fayyum looked at by the study, 28 per cent had never been educated, 42 per cent were drop outs, and 26 per cent went to school. Sixty-three per cent stayed with their families, and eight per cent visited their families occasionally. Seventy per cent of the children had lived in the streets for a year, and 83 per cent received financial aid from NGOs. They had been subjected to abuse such as verbal insults (six per cent) and beating by elder children (25 per cent). In 2005, UNICEF statistics estimated the number of street children in Egypt to be one million, but no exact number has been available after the 25 January and 30 June Revolutions. H.B put his needs in a nutshell. “I can't go back home because my brother fights with me all the time. All I need is a room to live in,” he said.
