Engaging Citizens: A Game Changer For Development Final project

1. Millions of Egyptian children are born into poverty, where
malnutrition at a young age translates into lifelong health
problems. The pressures of making ends meet drive many
families to put their children to work, often in dangerous jobs that
jeopardize their health as well as their futures.
With many families facing break up or a difficult existence in
large urban slums, street children have become an unwelcome
feature of too many cities. Hundreds of thousands of rural
adolescent girls are discouraged from completing school and
face lives of early marriage, illiteracy and domestic abuse.
Likewise, each year, hundreds of thousands of youth graduate to
find either they don’t have the skills for a job, or that there are no

2. New children to the street are usually incorporated into and
absorbed by these networks of relations, and are often forced to
face the choice between gaining group acceptance and
membership; or abandoning these networks, and exposing
themselves to being sporadic ‘derelicts,’ who can easily be
harassed and exploited.
Child abuse in the family or school, low income and low
educational levels in the family, family breakdowns, poor quality
teaching, are among some of the reasons why children take to the
streets.

3. Government works best when
citizens are directly engaged in
policymaking and public service delivery.
What conditions are necessary for
inclusive and effective citizen engagement?
Can it positively improve people's lives? Egypt’s most serious social
issues are poverty and overpopulation. There are few wealthy
people and many poor people.
 soaring unemployment rate.
 The crime rate has almost tripled since 2010.
 Street Children’s
 Egypt endures rolling blackouts.
 Fuel shortages and traffic jams hinder communication.
 Rising cost of food.

4. Here we will focus on Street
children's Problem
 objectives of our citizen engagement initiative.
 key players.
 How it will work?
 Risks and opportunities
 How will we know if it is successful or not.

5. Children in Egypt are affected by
widespread violence, exploitation,
human trafficking and inadequate
family care resulting in thousands
of children living on the street
Its hard to tell how many children are living on the street
in Egypt, The numbers are very large and almost
certainly growing. With the difficulty of quantifying the
phenomenon.
We aim here to give a hand to solve this problem (
actually minimize as its hard to solve totally).by
gathering people and Civil Society Organizations
initiatives and efforts we may succeed partially to solve
this problem

6. Roles performed
Direct engagement and support for communities.
Delivery of basic services and essential infrastructures at local level.
Empower marginalized grass roots communities and people living in poverty,
particularly women,
participation in public policy, through capacity building and strengthening social
mobilization
Monitor government and donor policies and development practices through
policy research
Facilitate cooperation and collaboration with local government authorities
Build trust among the different social groups and encourage dialogue between
members of society and state institutions,
Educate and help shape social values of democracy, solidarity and social
justice
Find and leverage sources of financing and human resources for development
directly as recipients or as donor channels
Connect and create networks among Civil Society Organizations to
encourages accountability.

7. In another initiative implemented by
CARITAS and four other NGOs in
Cairo and Alexandria, street children are
encouraged to reflect on their lives and to
express their thoughts and hopes about their
future. The children do this in a creative,
participatory manner by compiling pictures,
drawings, poems and stories which are to be
published in the “White Book of Our Future”.

8. The main forms of child trafficking in Egypt
include seasonal or temporary marriages,
trafficking for the purpose of slavery or forced
labor, trafficking for the purpose of removal of organs and trafficking
for the purpose of sexual exploitation. The lack of specialized child
protection services (e.g. social workers, caregivers, judges, police,
and prosecutors) is a major gap in Egypt’s child welfare system.
The justice system focus on prosecution of perpetrators of child abuse
or, in the case of juveniles, on detention, leaves little room for the
rehabilitation of child victims and children in conflict with the law.
Police abuse, arbitrary detention and overreliance on detention during
all stages of the criminal procedure are a major challenge to children’s
access to justice.
We as a members of NGO`s, UNICEF is working to improve the lives
of street children and to educate, empower individual boys and girls.
Project is being implemented through reception centers targeting
street children. Centers deal specifically with the problems faced by
street children, provide them with meals and the space to rest or
engage in recreational activities.

9. The main areas of intervention are:
Strengthening specialized child protection services.
This involves consolidating community-based Child Protection
Committees for the early identification of and response to children in
need of care and protection. At national level the main focus is on
strengthening the Child Helpline, the specialization of social workers
on child protection and specific project interventions for children living
in the street and children victims of trafficking.
 Preventing violence against children. The programe engages with
communities, government and religious leaders to prevent
violence against children, including FGM/C. Prevention of violence
in schools is another new area of work that aims at developing and
implementing national child protection policies as part of a safe
learning environment.
 Supporting children’s access to justice. This intervention
concentrates on providing legal aid to children in contact with the
law, reintegration programes and capacity building of justice actors
(judges, prosecutors, lawyers, police).
 Developing independent mechanisms for promoting and protection
child rights. UNICEF works with the National Council for Human
Rights in operationalizing a children’s unit mandated to receive
complaints, mediate and independently investigate alleged grave
violations of children’s rights. In parallel, civil society groups are
supported to monitor the situation of children in Egypt and
advocate for their rights.

11. contributions from people make it
possible support programs in Egypt,
and so much more.