Egypt - Overview 

Capital: Cairo
Area: 997,739 km²
Population: 77.5 million (July 2005)
Ethnic groups: Hamito-Semites, Arabs
Official language(s): Arabic
Religion(s): Islam
Currency: 1 Egyptian pound = 100 piastres

SOS Children's Villages' activities in the country

In 1974, Jehan El-Sadat, wife of the Egyptian President at that time, Anwar El-Sadat paid a visit to Austria. It was during this visit that she and Hermann Gmeiner decided that an SOS Children's Village should be built in Egypt. The SOS Children's Village was built together with a kindergarten in Nasr City, a district of Cairo. They were able to go into operation at the end of 1976. The Egyptian Society for SOS Children's Villages was founded a year later as the legal body for the SOS Children's Village work in the country.

Because of the many orphaned and abandoned children in Egypt, SOS Children's Villages decided to build more facilities in the country. The results were an SOS Children's Village in Amria, near Alexandria in 1980 and another in Tanta in 1984. Both SOS Children's Village children and children from the neighbourhood visit the attached SOS Kindergartens.

In 1987 the SOS Hermann Gmeiner School in Alexandria opened its doors to the public, which is nowadays run externally. An SOS Youth Facility was set up in 1981 for the youths who had outgrown the SOS Children's Village in Cairo. Here they are helped to prepare to live on their own and are assisted in looking for jobs.

Asyut, in the south of the country was hit by flooding caused by heavy rain at the end of 1994. This was followed by an explosion at an oil depot. Both these incidents caused massive loss of life and many thousands of people lost their homes. SOS-Kinderdorf International reacted immediately by setting up an SOS Emergency Relief Programme. An emergency village was erected to house 42 families and both a medical centre and social centre were set up to help people affected by the disasters. These were handed over to the Egyptian government later on and are not run by SOS anymore.

Egypt's First Lady, Suzanne Mubarak, helped lay the cornerstone for an SOS Hermann Gmeiner School in Cairo in 1995. The school was opened in time for the new school year in 1997 and has the capacity to take in 3,000 pupils.It is run by the “Futures Language School” group.

In mid-2003, a joint project with the UNHCR was undertaken to care for unaccompanied minors in Cairo who are refugees from various African countries at war. The aim is to either repatriate them after the respective conflict has been resolved or to resettle them abroad.
 

In late 2004, SOS Children’s Villages started to operate a Family Strengthening Programme in the Cairo Area, which enables children who are at risk of losing the care of their family to grow within a caring family environment. In 2006.a similar programme was started in Alexandria. To achieve this, SOS Children’s Villages works directly with families and communities to empower them to effectively protect and care for their children, in cooperation with local authorities and other service providers.   

The Social Centre Cairo, joint project with the UNHCR, closed by the end of 2009. The youths (refugees) received support from SOS Children's Villages until their papers were made ready for immigration.

At present there are three SOS Children’s Villages in Egypt, three SOS Youth Facilities, two SOS Kindergartens and two Social Centres.

 

Contact:
Egyptian Society for SOS Children's Villages
2 El Maraghy Street
El Agouza
Cairo
Egypt
tel. +20-2 7625941
fax +20-2 7625940