| The City Initiative Project - in spite of all the surrounding difficult
circumstances - began as a young movement of the non-governmental organizations who
adopted collectively this matter that has not been before on the map of the civil
activities. The aim was to reach the following objectives:
(1) To get acquainted with the
efforts made in the tangible field reality.
(2) To collect information and the
difficulties concerning the process of the project in reality and to try to study and
solve them with all NGOs participating in the project.
Each
field visit at the participating NGOs was followed by a meeting of these NGOs that was
called " follow-up workshop".
-
These follow-up workshops were employed for the benefit of the collective work of the
NGOs, the exchange of experiences and finding collective solutions for the problems and
difficulties that each NGO faces.
- These follow-up workshops came out with important recommendations in the
improvement of the project regarding that they express the actual needs of the field
movement of the NGOs participating in the "City Initiative" project.
- The project succeeded in presenting itself to the society as well as in
interweaving in it the civil and governmental efforts for the mobilization of all the
society resources (civil or governmental ones) with the aim of reaching a better care of
street children.
- The adoption of the issue by Mrs. Suzanne Mubarak and her call for laying
down a unified strategy for facing and treating this phenomenon had a string effect on all
the participating parties (both the civil and the governmental ones).
- This drove those in charge of this project to invite a wider range of NGOs to
work in the field of street children and children doing marginal work, until their number
became 20 NGOs from 12 governorates. The first meeting of the Central Network was held on
12/10/1997. It was opened by Dr. Amina El-Guindi, the Secretary General of the National
Council for Childhood and Motherhood. A General Secretariat was also formed for the
Central Network. One of its most important achievements was the interweaving of the
efforts of the NGOs and the concerned governmental agencies, while one of the most
important papers was the one submitted by the Center for the Protection and Development of
the Child and his Rights (PDCR) in this historic meeting called "Declaration of
Principles of the Central Network". Among the results of the First Central Network
Meeting we may also mention its coming out with numerous general recommendations. On this
day the representative of UNICEF in Cairo, Mrs. Leila Bisharat also participated in
opening the Exhibition of Photos on and Drawings made by Street Children.
- The wide-range effect of the project as well as the result of the continual
mobilization efforts led several NGOs (from governorates where the "City
Initiative" project had not had cooperation before) to contact the Center for the
Protection and Development of the Child and his Rights (PDCR) to declare their own
initiative in the work with these groups of children. Thus the circle of supporters of the
"City Initiative" Project is widening and it is no more limited to those NGOs
who launched the "City Initiative" Project. Ahmed Sedik
Publications:
(1) The first publication of PDCR was the 1995 report entitled
"Experiences with Street Children in Egypt" by Ahmed Sedik.
(2) The second
publication of PDCR was the 1999 report entitled "City Initiative (1) for the
Protection of Street Children and Children Doing Marginal Work" (1st Part) by Ahmed
Sedik and Mustafa Kandil.
(3) The
"City Initiative" Project Central Network publishes a non-periodical Newsletter
of which the 1st issue came out in October, 1999.
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