Child poverty increases in Egypt as critical support languishes
As independent organizations work to alleviate poverty and ensure access to education for Egypt’s children, the government’s NGO law is backfiring, hindering such attempts.
In the days leading up to Coptic Christmas on Jan. 7, Ezzat Naem, the founder and director of the Spirit of the Youth Association, was preparing gifts of clothing for some of the children of Cairo's Manshiyat Nasr neighborhood. Naem's organization, established in 2004, seeks to educate children from Manshiyat Nasr about how to recycle safely along with reading and mathematics.
A suburb in the hills of Mokattam, in eastern Cairo, Manshiyat Nasr is home to the Zabaleen, the mostly impoverished garbage collectors who recycle much of Cairo’s rubbish.
“About 60% of the kids are outside the formal education system,” Naem explained to Al-Monitor. “The opportunity for school is out because they go with their fathers to collect the garbage from households and merchants. Once they return, it’s too late for school.”
“They don’t play like [other] kids,” Naem said. “They don’t have fun, so they don’t have something nice, except some days they go to church. So they are losing a lot of their birthrights as children.”
