Financial Inclusion in Egypt - Empower 8000 women

Since our last report, we were happy to announce that preparations for a fourth round of our B’edaya initiative began in August of this year. This fourth cycle will officially launch beginning 2020 and is expected to end in May/June of 2022.

For those of you who are not familiar with B’edaya, it is a unique initiative which empowers women to become agents of their own development and make sustainable progress helping them to overcome their poverty and loneliness. We do this by empowering these widowed mothers of children from our Not Alone program, to act as entrepreneurs curating and managing their own projects, in order to increase their income and in turn, financially sustain themselves and their families. A secondary goal of the initiative is to assist these mothers to become role models for their children by enhancing their welfare. In doing so, we hope that this will instill a sense of leadership in these women, and as a result increase their children’s’ awareness—so that they too, will follow their example and grow into being responsible adults.

Since our last update, we reported that applications were being screened through a rigorous review of proposals and interviews with the applicant widows.

Here’s where we are now:

162 applications have been received, revised, and are now being analyzed in order to determine which projects will advance to the second stage of screening. Our B’edaya Project Specialist has begun to conduct field visits to all the selected areas in order to determine the 80 final projects that will be chosen as recipients. These visits will be conducted until January 2020. The Project Specialist has also prepared a training curriculum and is conducting business training workshops with the mothers on budget and project management.

The Decision Making Committee, which consists of the Project Specialist, the Area Program Manager, and the Not Alone Program Manager, will reach a final decision concerning the projects that will obtain funding based on their evaluation of the Project Specialists’ field visits. The Project Specialist will then organize an opening ceremony where the widows will receive their funding, and begin executing their planned projects. At the end of the round, the mothers will be celebrated at a closing ceremony, where they will have a chance to exchange their success stories.

Since we first launched the B’edaya initiative, we have seen projects being divided among areas of retail, production, and service. Retail projects include anything from grocery, clothing, livestock, household supplies, and cosmetics. Production projects include sewing, livestock and dairy. Lastly, Service projects include hairdressing, photography, ironing, and upholstery. From the 7 years where we’ve implemented three rounds of B’edaya, 1,141 projects of these kind have been implemented. We have found that the outcome of these projects have exceeded our expectations. The net profit of the projects within the initiative demonstrated excellent results and mothers learned budget control and project management.

• The projects helped around 40% of the mothers meet their monthly basic needs such as food and water.
• 26.67% of the mothers profited and were even able to help their daughters/sons in expenses of marriage, education, etc.
• 33.33% of the mothers could get their homes renovated; examples include plumbing and wall plastering.
• 60 families have provided positive feedback on the impact of the projects on their lives.
• The income of 50% of the mothers increased beyond 1000 EGP.
• The awareness of project management and budget management increased for 70% of the mothers.
• 80% of the beneficiaries’ children are committed to attending their classes.
• 70% of the projects still run successfully after the B’edaya Initiative cycle ends.
• 20% of the mothers coach and assist other mothers to start their own project.

We are so proud of these audacious women and grateful to all the donors who help fund this initiative!

Links:

• http://www.copticorphans.org
• https://copticorphans.org/programs/bedaya/