Through sheer strength of faith, seven young women practised social outreach long before its time: Dena Rashed examines Egypt's oldest female volunteer organisation The work of the Women's Health Improvement Association (WHIA), established in 1936 on the initiative of seven young women concerned about the spread of tuberculosis, has continued uninterrupted to this day. At 93, Sherifa Mehrez -- one of the founders of WHIA, which started under the supervision of the then head of the Ministry of Health's chest disease department Mahmoud Abaza as a support fund for the families of consumption patients -- has spent a good 70 years in the good deed business. "Many people thought we are crazy," she recounts, "underestimating how much we could help -- but we got on with it." Sitting at her desk at the WHIA headquarters in Abdine, Mehrez details how, encouraged by her parents, she and her six friends managed to raise funds for the families of department interns by contributing 10 piastres each. "Numerous people started chipping in after that," she beams. The association is a busy place, with female voices resounding all over. Women in galabiyas crowd the premises, seeking modest loans with which to start small businesses -- one of several ways in which WHIA reaches out. "The first time," explains Aleya Mohamed, the mother of two and, thanks to help from WHIA, a clothes merchant, "the association loaned me LE250, but now the figure has gone up to LE2,000." She is now in the process of renting her first outlet in Khan Al-Khalili, after all. Such help, she explains, sitting with a group of friends, is essential to the lives of many women: women bail each other in the case of failure to pay back; and WHIA requires no guarantee except for witnesses. According to Said El-Ghol, since 1996 loans of up to LE3,000 have helped women from the poorest segments of society finance small businesses: "So far we've had around 11,000 women benefiting from loans worth LE6 million." And WHIA has had a repayment rate of 100 per cent, evidencing the success of the projects: "These women are adamant about maintaining a clean reputation; they do their best not to require bail." Karima Abdel-Aziz, a widow, is particularly impressed with the progressive scheme of the initiative: the loans grow in tandem with the projects. And though they manage to spread the word, as El-Ghol points out, the projects are continually subject to being cut short by urban development, since most of the women live and work in shanty towns: "We do our best to help them out in this case." Yet the loan programme is but one string of narrative in a many-sided story. In one room, for example, two women and a girl sit with three young men, waiting for a teacher to show up -- literacy class. The men are friends who encourage each other; of the women, Fatma Abdel-Hamid, a housewife, has been attending for three months: "I passed the association one day and decided to step in, that's how I started both literacy and embroidery classes." Though she attended school up to the preparatory stage, she had lost touch and is now impressed by her ability to read and write more clearly -- she took my notes for me and went over every word I would report on her class. Though her aim was to learn embroidery, "the friendly, loving atmosphere" at the association has encouraged Rawya Sanad who takes an additional hour of Arabic and maths a day as well. Elsewhere Kawthar Salem, sewing instructor and proud mother of two university graduates, sits before her sewing machine in the very room she used to enter as a student 30 years ago. "The times have changed," she laments. "Since the 1970s, the number of women who want to learn sewing has dropped so much." In collaboration with the Ministry of Information, indeed, WHIA has even introduced computer classes -- to keep up with the times. "Our subscribers are mostly boys," IT instructor Shahinaz Nassar testifies, "but many people from many places are keen on the classes because of their efficiency and low fees." But it is the research department that is the oldest and, according to Fawqia Ismail who has been working here for 30 years, the most significant in the association: "patients come to us first and, based on an assessment of their condition, we refer them to other departments." Such efforts, conducted with the help of volunteer doctors from the Nile Badrawi Hospital, have helped countless patients through the years; they have been especially true to the original intentions of WHIA -- whose present headquarters relocated in 1967 from a tuberculosis quarantine established in 1947 and still functional as an economically independent boarding school and old people's home complex -- since the tuberculosis resurgence of the 1980s. To promote the work of its beneficiaries, WHIA holds an annual fair showcasing products from 27 branches -- the latest round of which will be held at the Abdine headquarters on 7-8 December -- including food, clothes, jewellery, carpets, furniture and chinaware. Sawsan Hussein, one of two women to have taken over from Mazhar, points out, "we rely on the fair to generate income for the various departments." Hussein is proud to have succeeded Mehrez, along with Mona Zulfiqar, though she is under no illusion about the responsibility this entails: improving the performance of the Upper Egypt branches -- her self-proclaimed mission -- will require the help of such private-sector funders as the Sawiris Foundation: "In general the idea of micro-loans has been widely encouraged this year. And I'd like to seize the opportunity to call on civil society and potential donors to help. We don't have help from the state, WHIA has always depended on voluntary funding from people, families or organisations." This is reflected in the low profile WHIA workers tend to keep: "We are not in show business, whether we work here or make financial contributions to the organisation. We have faith in what we do, so we don't feel the need to talk about it." For her part Mehrez's only wish is for "a greater number of beneficiaries and more donations". For more information contact WHIA: 29 El-Sheikh Rihan St.; telephone: 7951213; e-mail: [email protected]
