Egypt's President Abdel Fattah El Sisi has ordered EGP500 million (about $70 million) from the "Tahya Misr" fund, to be allocated to developing the slum areas and to sheltering homeless children, the spokesperson for the presidency said Friday. Ambassador Alaa Youssef added that the Community Development Council was currently preparing a comprehensive study about homeless children, prior to submitting a report about their total number and the conditions in which they live, to the President. Youssef's statement came in response to an initiative launched by the TV show "Sout Al Nas" (Voice of the People), whose aim is to support homeless children. In a telephone conversation with the show's host, Youssef said that President Sisi supported every initiative aimed at helping children and the cabinet was also implementing projects to provide shelter for the children. In April 2014, Egypt's National Center for Social and Criminological Research estimated the number of homeless children to be two million, whilst the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood said they were no more than a few score thousand. Experts confirmed that the number of homeless children in Egypt had doubled in the past three years.
