CAIRO: What started as a casual conversation over lunch ended with LE 5 million raised in funds for a cancer rehabilitation center for children in a record period of three months. Tatiana Halawa, 14, and Omar Barakat, 16, learnt about the Health and Hope Oasis NGO and the difficulties it's facing to build a recreational center for children with cancer over a lunch gathering. This encouraged them to contact their friends and classmates and within a few days a team of 19 students was formed with the majority coming from the British International School in Cairo (BISC), Cairo American College (CAC), Lycee Francais, the American International School (AIS) and the American University in Cairo (AUC). That was the birth of the Health and Hope Oasis Youth Team under the slogan "For the youth, by the youth. The group was able to collect LE 5 million in three months. "We are socially responsible towards our society and we thought it's time to make an effort to try to help our society in terms of doing things outside instead of doing it through school, we wanted to directly have an input, said 17-year-old Kareem Bishara, the group's spokesperson. Health and hope The center offers underprivileged children a place to stay while undergoing chemotherapy, Bishara said. "Because what happens is that [after] the [chemotherapy] sessions they go back to their homes which usually lack proper sanitation so they get very sick because their immunity is very low, he added. The Health and Hope Oasis was in founded in 1992 to provide children with cancer from low income families with high quality medical services. However, they saw that many children were dying for no apparent reason after surviving cancer. This was due to other factors such as unhygienic homes or not getting the proper nutrition because they share limited amounts of food with their siblings. Realizing that it wasn't enough to treat cancer, the group teamed up with Care with Love, a home health care organization in Cairo, to build a nutritional and recreational care center in Wadi Al-Natroun where they provide children with proper nutrition, infection control, therapy and emotional support. Fundraising The team started working in September with the objective of collecting LE 4 million by the end of December. They set a plan which required each member to contact 10 people for a donation in the range of LE 10,000. They decided to dive head first, conducting their first meeting with Minister of Tourism Zuhair Garranah. "We arranged a meeting and we went and explained to him about the cause and our financial plan with a detailed presentation; he was very excited and touched, explained Halawa. At the time, Garranah donated LE 15,000, but made them promise to turn to him if they needed more. He kept his word and took them to the finish line with an additional LE 500,000 at the end. Each member contacted people they knew through family and friends and went in groups to give them a detailed presentation of the project. "The donors were overwhelmed by the idea of a young group of friends working for a good cause; that wasn't something they could just pass over and many of them had their own reasons for being sympathetic for the cause, Naila Marie, 17, said. They met with leading philanthropists such as Yousria Loza and corporations such as Ezz El Arab and were able to sell their idea, using all their contacts to create a network. "We used the connections we have to our advantage as we were able to talk to them on a personal level, said Amina Diab, who managed to get one appointment from which they secured LE 2 million. But it takes courage to contact high profile people, a task they usually left for colleague Samir Helmy whom the group described as "the brave one making the important calls. "At first it was a bit scary but then when you learn that you can talk to them and they are very willing to listen and contribute, you get a good feeling afterwards and it becomes easy to ask other donors, Helmy explained. Fundraising campaigns for the Children s Cancer Hospital are still ongoing, but the Health and Hope Oasis Youth Team explain that they are two separate things. "Four out of 10 children in Egypt die after cancer treatment due to the polluted environment they live in after their treatment; our target is those aged between 0-25 because these are the least likely to survive as the pollution a child absorbs is 10 times more than the pollution an adult absorbs, Francine Loza, 16, explained. More to come "The experience changed me. We are usually focused on our school and studies, but this made us aware of the things that are happening. It's not as people say, we are young and can't do anything. If we are together and join efforts we can make a big difference, Farida Al Tarzi, 17, said. "It was a very nice experience. It was very fulfilling that we are so privileged and we are helping underprivileged children and the fact that we are the youth helping the youth, Tamara Halawa, 17, said. The team recognizes the importance of continuing their efforts in raising money for the NGO. The LE 5 million they raised will go to phase one of the project, which is basically the infrastructure. "For phase two what we are planning to do is raise LE 1 million every year for three years for the running costs of the [center] so we are looking to find 10 or 20 people who are going to give us a fixed sum annually instead of finding new donors every year, said Loza.
