CAIRO: Ambassador Mushira Khattab, Secretary General of the National Council for Maternity and Childhood, met last week with Xavier Emmanuel, founder of Samusocial International (SSI), a French NGO assisting victims of social exclusion and non-blending groups. The event came within the framework of the growing concern about street children, and the need for collaborative efforts by the government, the private sector and NGOs to control such phenomenon and reach a radical solution to eradicate it from our community. It was attended by Unicef representatives, the CEO of France Telecom, and Vincenzo Nesci, Head of Alcatel-Lucent Middle East RU. Xavier delivered a speech expressing his keenness to contribute with radical solutions that would eradicate the phenomenon through the establishment of an office for SSI in Cairo. This office is scheduled to start operation soon and aims to integrate those children within the community as active members qualified to participate in the various fields of development. Xavier's ideas were met with support from Khattab who welcomed cooperation with him, benefiting from the experts of Samusocial International to train volunteers who shall be in charge of dealing with and rehabilitating street children. Nesci delivered a speech where he emphasized Alcatel-Lucent s commitment to serve Egyptian society. Throughout the past six years, Alcatel-Lucent had been supporting educational programs for Egyptian youth through cooperation with various universities, institutes and organizations. Today, said Nesci, Alcatel-Lucent was confirming its initiative to extend support to Dr. Xavier and his team to conduct a study to evaluate the status of street children and to establish an office for SSI in Cairo as soon as possible. He mentioned SSI s success worldwide, where it conducted similar projects in countries like Algeria, Burkina Faso, Mali, Cameroon and Peru. Nesci was hopeful that such success would be repeated in Cairo. He also stated that Alcatel-Lucent had already allocated part of its 2007 budget to contribute to the establishment of this project and will continue to set plans for future cooperation between Alcatel-Lucent and Samusocial International to sustain the growth and development of the project.
