CAIRO - Local institutions and NGOs concerned with street children and orphans should kick-start new and non-traditional strategies to build a trust-based relationship with needy children in order to eradicate this dangerous social phenomenon, which is escalating in the Greater Cairo area, a representative of the Ministry of Social Affairs said on Wednesday during a press conference. The UNICEF found in 2009 that 1.4 million orphans live in Egypt, while the UN Commission for Refugees said that more than one million children are living in the streets, according to a press release by the international non-profit organisation FACE during the tenth anniversary celebration of its work in Egypt. Recent data shows that the phenomenon is escalating especially after the bad circumstances of the country and the unsafe streets following the Revolution erupted in January 2011. "Governmental orphanages on the contrary began dismissing places instead of attracting new ones to help orphans and street children," Social Affairs Ministry representative Abdul Hakeem Hamooda noted during the event, attended by the head of Operations at the EU, Luara Garagnani; the Minister of Sports; the Secretary-General of the National Council For Childhood and Motherhood (NCCM); FACE founder Flavia Shaw-Jackson; and FACE ambassador in Egypt, Dalia Fayed. The founder of FACE for needy children in Egypt, Flavia Shaw-Jackson, said that one of their missions is to share strategies of foster families (Kafala) among NGOs, who still work on a traditional strategy that do not fix the problem on a long range. For her part, Jackson, who started her mission in Egypt in 2003 and accommodates 1,227 children in five of its orphanages, said that adopting the Kafala system was much needed because orphans and street children are in dire need to feel the love of family in order to regain trust in society and in adults generally. One of the creative methods is the participatory approach, which is a specific method. According to this approach, children participate in food preparation, in the creation of timetable, rules, and decorations. It's the first step towards reintegration into society. According to the Social Affairs Ministry representative, current figures don't give the real number of street children and orphans, calling all bodies concerned and international organisations working in Egypt to start putting a unified database that helps detect the real figure.
