Mokattam
APE’s activities started in the Mokattam area in 1984 with
the establishment of the compost plant. Previously the manure from the pigs
simply piled up on the streets. Today, the plant is located in Kattamia and
the compost is in great demand throughout Egypt. In 1988 and 1991, rug and
paper recycling units were established. The cottage industry specifically
targeted women, and they became part of a “learn and earn” program, which
also taught health, social, educational and economic skills, because APE
wanted to empower the women of the community, not just employ them.
Additional centers were set up to take care of children while their mothers
worked as well as to provide a safe environment for community children in
general (Walker, Wendy, 2005).
In torah squatter area Mrs. Yousriya Loza Sawiris jointly with Dr.
Ayman Moharm CEO of Enhancement in the 1990, APE decided to upgrade the Tora settlement which is also an
area inhabited by garbage collectors. Prior to APE’s initiatives, Tora
lacked suitable infrastructure (electricity, sewage etc.). The area also had
no public services, such as a police station, fire bridge, schools,
hospitals, telephones, or veterinary units, though the area had over 13,000
animals. This had led to the spread of diseases in both humans and animals.
APE decided to follow the same pattern as in Mokattam through developing the
area of garbage collectors in Tora and establishing the Developed Center for
collection, sorting and recycling of garbage in Kattamia.
Garbage collectors would live now in a housing area allocated especially for
them, whereas the garbage is transferred to a remote area away from the
urban community (APE’s Kattamia site, 19km away from their housing area). It
is the first pilot project that combines raising the health, economic and
environmental levels of the garbage collectors on one hand and developing
solid waste management and protecting the environment from pollution on the
other.
Children's Club
A children's club, launched in 1993, is designed to provide pre-school
children with a chance to acquire pre-school skills and escape from the
horror being close to garbage on the street, at least for a few hours of
each day. Field trips, celebrations and nutrition are important aspects of
this activity. The club receives 4-6 year olds and prepares them for school.
Literacy classes are offered to school drop-outs, and a paper-recycling
project provides one more option and an income generating activity for girls
and women.
Day Care and Infant Nursery
This program offers a clean, safe environment
for babies and toddlers aged 6 months to 4 years. These are children of
mothers working in APE projects and, space-permitting, of mothers of the
community at large. Children are offered daily hot meals, a safe outdoor
play area, and activities such as puppetry, games and crafts, through which
they are taught basic skills.
Eco-Garden
An eco-garden was started in Mokattam in February 2002 after the compost
plant was removed -- leaving a fertile patch of land. The compost plant was
transferred to Kattamia.
The presence of the eco-garden in the middle of Mokattam adds an element of
natural beauty, provides much needed shade and improves the air quality.
Trees and plants in the eco-garden are indigenous to Egypt, some since Pharaonic times, and promote the concept of sustainability by producing
edible or otherwise useful fruit.
Literacy Program and Computer Classes
This program allows students to follow a system taught by Caritas called
"learn and be liberated" that teaches reading phonetically and not
alphabetically as it is still taught in government programs. This is the
same system followed in pre-school.
After-school classes are implemented to decrease the rate of school
dropouts. APE has started a new program for students from the first to sixth
grades in primary school. This program helps create a good learning
atmosphere by helping students with their homework, providing nutritious
meals, creating awareness, and providing quiet space for study which is
often not found at home.
Paper Recycling Unit
This program began after an APE volunteer and two young Mokattam residents
attended the YWCA Waste Recycling conference in 1991 in Crete, Greece. The
important feature of this project's work is that it is hand-made by women in
a field that is usually reserved for men because of its physical
difficulties. The paper is environmentally friendly; no glue or chemicals
are added. The women use the paper to make cards, envelopes and gift bags
with a lot of artistic inserts like dried flowers, leaves, and embroidery.
Rug-Weaving and Patchwork Unit
This project was launched in 1988 with support of the composting
project, which was then on its feet and viable. This project targeted girl
dropouts who had had to go out on the garbage route as children and who had
thus been deprived of the chance to go to school. The mothers were recruited
into what we call our "learning and earning" school - a model of how to
learn all the elements of school learning but in a recycling project
revolving around the transformation of surplus rugs into marketable
products. These rugs are donated by the private textile sector of Egypt. The
project incorporates literacy, personal and environmental hygiene and
empowerment to deal with culture-specific matters such as female
circumcision and early marriage.
This project runs with the vision that a woman in a development project
further involves the residents of Mokattam Garbage village. It receives
annually, on average, 100 girls and young women. A 306-month training period
introduces trainees to the art and skill of weaving rugs on a hand loom and
sewing patchwork items. Building on the existing skill of sorting garbage,
this project creates an alternative educational model in non-formal
education for girls and women who never had the chance to go to school. It
views the waste and sorting context of recycling as potential for
income-generating numeracy while incorporating elements of personal and
environmental hygiene. Business skills are developed and computer literacy
is added.
Skill acquisition covers the areas of color identification, classification,
space relationships, numeracy, literacy, home economics, personal and
environmental hygiene, and a host of other learning built on existing skills
within the community's recycling ethos. The approach adopted in holistic and
includes recreation and celebration, through field trips and monthly
entertainment, which feature health and socio-dramas, primary health care
training in nutrition, mother and child health, family planning, negative
traditional practices, prevention measures against accidents, as well as
discussion revolving around major production and project management
concerns.
Literacy classes are offered on the premises of APE, and are scheduled to
suit the staggered training schedule of trainees. Based on Feirian methods
of literacy instruction, the curriculum is designed around slightly
different principles of con-scientization based upon sources of hope rather
the than root causes of oppression.
Graduation parties inaugurate the productive families' phase of the project
where trainees go on to producing items from their homes. They continue to
secure their rugs and work orders from APE, which markets the products both
locally and internationally. A 1994 census of participants in this project
indicated a total of 500 girls and women had graduated from the center, of
whom a 200 continue to be cottage industry workers. Of these, 64% practice
family planning and 56% are opposed to female circumcision.