Mai Samih discovers what solidarity really means through the work of the Egyptian Food Bank For years, the Egyptian Food Bank (EFB) has been working to ensure that many people can sleep at night without fear of missing a meal the following day. However, EFB staff have more to give than just food, with EFB chief executive Moataz El-Shudi, announcing a campaign to abolish hunger in Upper Egypt under the title hamlit al-satr on 4 April. "The campaign will be extended to the whole of Egypt in the near future in order to ensure a decent life for all," El-Shudi said. Shahira El-Mahdi, programme leader for the campaign, said that "one of our primary aims is to provide immediate relief for villages in Upper Egypt and then to look at ways of making them self-sufficient in food and other items." Agharid Amin, resource development and marketing manager for EFB, explained the details of the relief campaign. "The campaign aims at the relief of villages in Upper Egypt, and it started when TV host Amr Adib showed us pictures of the conditions in the villages, including the lack of nutrition, and asked us to help the inhabitants." "Immediate relief comes in the form of dried and packed food, as well as blankets, hardware, and even roofs for the houses that need them. We have provided 150,000 families with essential food items like rice, spaghetti, sugar, and lentils, and we are working with 45,000 volunteers, as well as hotel personnel, to provide food for families in the villages," she said. Giving a more detailed breakdown, al-Mahdi added that "the EFB has so far helped 1,570 families in the Haggar al-Dahsha village, 242 in the Armant district of Luxor, and 136 families in Esna, among other districts." The Luxor and Qena campaign began in February 2012. After the immediate relief phase comes the research phase, with the aim of making the villages more sustainable. Ahmed Labib, research manager for the EFB, explained how the villages were studied. "First, we surveyed the condition of all the villages in order to identify needy families and those containing the sick, widows, orphans, and divorcees." After studying 600 cases, the EFB was able to get a clearer sense of the extent of the problems. "We found that there were needs in terms of food, clothes, development, training, mini-projects, environmental services, and education," El-Mahdi said. The EFB's campaign covers Upper Egypt from Fayoum to Aswan. Founded in 2004, the organisation now has now some 45,000 volunteers working in 23,000 local groups and through the Food Bank's own structures and other bodies like the Dar Al-Orman. "We work through official organisations and the Ministry of Social Solidarity, which has a database that helps us in our research," Labib said. If all goes well, the first phase of the campaign will end by the beginning of Ramadan, with the overall aim of abolishing hunger in Egypt by 2015. Among the challenges the campaign faces is the lack of infrastructure in many Upper Egyptian villages. According to Labib, in villages like Hagar Al-Dahsha "there is no drinking water, and villagers either have to buy it or drink from local wells, which are a source of disease." The health and education sectors are poorly serviced, and there are few employment opportunities. For Amin, poverty can be divided into three essential kinds. "We fight three degrees of poverty: people suffering from ordinary poverty, those under the poverty line, and those in abject poverty. The latter are particularly difficult to handle in the absence of appropriate resources," she said. According to the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS), the percentage of poverty in 2011 in rural areas of Upper Egypt was 51 per cent. The highest percentages were in Aswan, Sohag and Assuit. In helping to reduce these figures, the EFB does not only give food, but also aims to train young people and help them to learn skills that will help them to earn a living. "I wish the concept of giving would prevail more in Egyptian society," said Labib, and Amin also believes that more could be done to ensure that those living in Upper Egypt have a better life. "In some cases the food we manage to send people rots because they have nowhere to store it. We are looking at ways of providing these families with appliances like fridges to help them preserve the food," she said. The EFB is also looking at ways of sharing experience with other countries in the region, including those with which it signed agreements in 2009, such as Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Yemen, Mauritania and Palestine.
