Valuable Girl: Empower 100,000 Girls in Egypt

Valuable Girl Program aims to empower girls on multiple levels: intrapersonal, interactional, and behavioral. VGP aims to capacitate girls psychologically, increase their social active participation in order for them to become the base of positive and safe future generation in Egypt. The program targets girls between 10 years (Little sisters) to 21 years (Big Sisters) who live in disadvantaged areas such as Upper Egypt (UE) and urban and unplanned areas in Cairo. One of VGP’s active tools to achieve its objectives is the mentorship sessions. The sessions allow the Big and Little Sisters to bond, share and learn values, and sometimes solve problems. Today’s success story is about the role of mentoring sessions in building a solid psychological capital of the Little Sister and raising the awareness about her personal rights.

UE is broadly known as a deprived area where people lack many basic services, financial resources, awareness of basic rights, and low education. The absence of rights-based enlightenment leads to inevitable retrogression on the individual/personal and collective/social levels. Marian (a Christian Big Sister in college) met Omaima (a Muslim Little Sister in 4^th grade) at one of the CDAs in their area. Omaima lives in a village where her family has a low income, her parents are divorced, and she is the oldest of four children. Due to her life circumstances, Omaima was introvert, hardly participate in a group activity, had weak academic performance and she couldn’t get private tutoring. Marian was so compassionate to help Omaima to improve at school. The mentoring session deepened the relation and trust between them and encouraged Omaima to share some of her family and personal problems. Omaima was physically abused by her school teacher who wanted to force her to get private tutoring with him. Marian encouraged Omaima to complain about her school teacher to the principal. Despite the principal ignored her complaint at first, Omaima put her foot down and defended her rights and defended herself from the teacher’s abuse by continuously raising her complaints to the principal. Finally, the principal responded to Omaima’s pleads and officially warned the teacher regarding his attitude.  Gradually, Omaima improved at school and developed an unwavering trust in Marian, her Big Sister. This encouraged Omaima’s mother to share more of their family issues with Marina because of her wisdom and maturity. Marian helped Omaima’s mother to get more child support from her ex-husband because he was taking advantage of the mother’s ignorance and lack of awareness of her rights. Omaima concluded her experience by saying “I had no self-confidence, distrusted people, felt afraid of Christians, but you (talking to her Big Sister) made me love all Christians and myself. I aspire to be of value to my family and help support them financially in the future. Thank you Ms. Marian”.

VGP’s mission was accomplished in Omaima and Marian’s lives by teaching them the peaceful co-existence and service to others. Through your steady support and generous donations, we will help more like Marian and Omaima to live better and become aware of their rights.