My designated NGO was Al-Shehab Institution for Promotion and Comprehensive Development. Al-Shehab primarily deals in the field of development. It works in developing marginalized and slum areas of Cairo and also aims at empowering the most marginalized groups such as women, children and youth without distinct based on sex, religion or color. Al-Shehab works with different slum areas but its main focus is Ezbet el Haggana which is a slum area located in the north eastern part of Cairo close to the airport and lacks basic social infrastructures like water, sanitary sewerage, education, electricity and healthcare and comprises of over a million poor people of which 4500 of them are refugees mainly from Sudan. According to Abdou who is the co-founder of Al-Shehab, the NGO’s vision is a democratic society where every human enjoys his/her social, economic and political rights in accordance with the international convention of human rights at the same time, empowering people to own their tools in order to achieve social justice and social monitoring. Al-Shehab has a number of goals it seeks for the community as a whole some of which are: empowering the most marginalized groups within the poor and slum areas, enhancing the community participation of the residents within the poor and slum areas, providing access to basic infrastructure for the people residing in these slum areas, building the capacity of the institution to enable it to achieve it goal and lastly, to alleviate all forms of discrimination and violence against minorities and to achieve integration between members of the area. Al-Shehab organizes events which focus on women, youth, children, health, legal aid and the displaced persons and refugees. Some of these events are community conferences on health, campaigns towards the Egyptian government to provide households with access to safe water, refugee rights programs, women empowerment, and skill training programs for the youth.
At the beginning of my practicum with Al-Shehab, I was told by the NGO that I will be assisting the co-founder of the organization (Abdou) in writing a proposal to the European Union in order for the NGO to secure a certain amount of financial aid to support its programs. I was sent the proposal guidelines via email to take a look at so that I will have an idea of what the proposal was about and strict instructions on how to fill it because it is long and complicated. The application consisted of two lots. Lot 1 is “Supporting the Democratic and Electoral Process” and lot 2 is “Improving the social and economic rights”. However, my hopes were shattered when I received a phone call from Abdou saying the organization was not able to get into lot 1 so only lot 2 was available. The initial plan was for us to meet and write the proposal before the deadline which was November 4th, 2009 but contact with Abdou after that day was impossible to establish because he was running from one side of Cairo to another for reasons best known to him. After complaints were made by I and my partner we finally got a hold of him and had a meeting on how we would make up for the time that was lost and I was finally assigned a project that would keep me busy since I was not able to work outdoors at the slum area due to language barrier and security issues. My project was to design a database for NGOs that work on social and economic rights in Egypt, North Africa and the Middle East. To be honest, I thought it would be easy but it was extremely frustrating and time consuming but at the end of it all, it was enlightening because I learnt about other NGOs within this region that are fighting nonstop on social and economic rights.
My whole experience in this practicum was not up to my expectation for reasons I will disclose in a moment. I was disappointed with the constant inconsistencies of the NGO on trying to assign us with tasks at the early stage of our practicum experience and I can link this with lack of coordination between both Al-Shehab and the Development Support Center because as I came to understand, there were other NGOs that were in my line of interest which was working on development but I was not assigned to instead I was assigned a partner to work in one when some of my colleges were assigned to two, some three NGOs to work with single handedly. In a way, I felt like the Al-Shehab did not really need interns and we were just pushed there to fill in a certain gap for a certain period of time because they did not really have anything for us to work on at the beginning. I must commend Al-Shehab for their honesty though because they were straight forward in telling us early enough that we would not be working in the field knowing that was what we were looking forward to. Also I would like to commend the staff of Al-Shehab on the aspect of integrity because they did not, as some NGOs tend to do, try to exploit us and turn us into work puppets by making us carry on tasks and over working us because we were interns. I believe I have reached the end of my practicum period but not the end of my learning experience with this NGO because I have decided to volunteer time and effort after this semester to work with them and see what else they have to offer. I think my group was just a little less fortunate but overall, a little experience is better than nothing.
There were some clear contrasts between some of the models we took in class and the NGO such as gender, social development, participation, and dependency. Al-Shehab more focused on women and by to promote their role in the society and helping those of them who have been victims of physical abuse through different programs such like physiological therapy, violence against women day and women empowerment schemes. Social development is the primary focus of this NGO and these developments are not only tangible but intangible in different spheres of health, education, socio-economic rights and legal aid. They organize community conferences on health issues to educate the people of these areas about diseases, personal hygiene and environmental health. They help in providing lawyer for the people of Ezbet el Haggana who render political empowerment of women by registering and issuing them documents like birth certificates and national identification cards so that they can practice their rights and vote in elections. The NGO has managed to fight for a sewage system for Ezbet el Haggana after it sued the government authorities responsible for water and environmental sanitation. It won the case against the environmental agency but was not the same for the water authority because it was on the verge of being privatized and had a lot of powerful backing. On dependency, there is a clear relationship between Al-Shehab and neighboring NGOs around in other countries but very dependent on northern states like the European Union for funding. A lot of their donors are embassies of developed countries here in Egypt like the German and Japanese Embassy in Cairo and Arab Women League. Finally on participation, Al-Shehab encourages a lot of women, children and youth participation in the community. They organize children summer camps to develop children skills through art and theatre, organize recreational and educational trips for school and working children and consolidate the teamwork spirit. Many of the children come back as volunteers in the future for new kids. They also provide trainings to women on income generation schemes such as handicrafts and literacy classes to find alternatives for female sex workers.
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