1. Working towards ending Child Marriage in Egypt
By: Nevein Dous
Health Program Manager, SCI Egypt
June 2014

2. Save the Children
We are the world’s leading independent organization for Children
Founded in 1919 and works in over 120 countries
We save children’s lives
We fight for their rights
We help them fulfill their potential

3. “life-cycle approach”
Our Vision and Mission
Our vision: is a world in which every child attains the right to survival, protection, development and participation
Our mission: is to inspire breakthroughs in the way the world treats children, and to achieve immediate and lasting change in their lives
“life-cycle approach”
The needs of specific age groups of children are addressed in a holistic way even before the child is born by targeting newlyweds, pregnant women, infants and young children aged 0-5 years, school-aged children aged 6-12 years, in- and out-of-school adolescents aged 12-18, thereby completing the life cycle.

4. Save the Children in Egypt
Operating in Egypt since 1982
Sponsorship Impact Area
HEALTH AND NUTRITION
Maternal, newborn and child health, nutrition, hunger and livelihoods
CHILD PROTECTION
Protection for children without appropriate care and in conflict or disaster
EDUCATION
Basic education, informal education early childhood development
CHILD RIGHTS GOVERNANCE
Child rights monitoring, strengthening national systems, awareness and capacity
Humanitarian Response Program

5. Where We Currently Work:
SC is implementing projects in 13 governorates across Egypt:
Qena
Sohag
Assiut
Minya
Beni Sueif
Fayoum
Cairo
Giza
Qalyoubia
Beheira
Gharbiya
Sharkiya
Alexandria
Our Partners are MOHP, MOE, MISA, NGOs, INGOs, Private sector

6. Situation of Egypt’s Children:
A good quarter of Egypt’s 90 m people live below the poverty line (compared to 21.6% in 2008/2009) and 23% of children under 15 years live in income poverty
5 million children are deprived of appropriate housing (shelter, water, sanitation), and 1.6million under 5 years suffer health and food deprivation
An estimated 2 million children deprived of home care and are living on the streets, facing numerous forms of violence, hardships and exploitation
An estimated 1.6 million children are in hazardous work
Lack of quality and relevant basic education, including poor school infrastructure, unsafe schools and poor education systems
High rates of unemployment among youth, especially girls and young women

7. Situation of Egypt’s Girls, a closer eye:
More than 91% of girls and women years old who have been cut (FGM)
Inequitable access to education services for girls and poor children with more than two million aged 6 to 18 have never attended school

8. Health Indicators and Facts
37% of women are illiterate
57.4% of women do not receive antenatal care
67% of community members do not have official Identification Papers

9. Save the Children’s work to end Child Marriage
Due to the critical impact of child marriage, Save the Children aims to address child marriage across all our core programs through different education, health and child protection interventions which incorporate a holistic approach of :
Legislations and policies: Advocacy and media for sharing lessons learned at multi-levels of national, regional and globally
Community-based : Address social norms, awareness raising, collaborates with local stakeholders, religious and natural leaders
Child and youth participation, Peer support, Adolescent training, livelihood opportunities
Parental education

10. Be the Innovator
Through our Ishraq Plus, a non-formal education programme adolescent girls aged living in rural areas receive life skills training and access to support and services.
The Arab Women Speak Out Session employs community mobilization strategies where groups of local women work social and health workers to disseminate messages on a range of women’s empowerment issues including FGM/C.
CHOICES project engages 10 to 14 year old girls and boys in reflective activities that challenge restrictive and inequitable gender norms and promote gender equality and an end to child marriage. In 2010, qualitative and qualitative findings documented that girls felt empowered to talk to their parents about continuing their studies and avoiding early marriage and boys advocated with their parents for their sisters’ education and delayed marriage.

11. Be the Innovator
PROMISES engaged community members in discussion using posters which promoted gender equality. In 2012 an evaluation found husbands became more positive in their view of their daughters’ ability to contribute to the community in the future and expressed increased understanding of the need for their daughters to be physically mature before marriage.
Building on this success, a further innovation was created in 2014 called VOICES which directly engages parents of children from the CHOICES intervention to speak out about the benefits of gender equality and so prevent early marriage through peer led behaviour and attitude change amongst other parents.

12. Programs’ Highlights Maternal and Child Health
We work to ensure that mothers and
infants survive and stay healthy during
pregnancy, childbirth and early childhood
in the most disadvantaged areas in Egypt
where services are most lacking and the
majority of deaths occur.
We strengthen the capacities of healthcare
providers; we improve their skills and invest
in improving local health care facilities.
We also work with families to improve their health and nutrition practices; we raise their awareness and encourage them to adopt healthy behaviors and seek out quality maternal and neonatal care.

13. Rural- Urban Challenges
Service availability and
accessibility
Community structure
Community needs
Socio-economic differences
Community leaders and players
Environmental hazards
(high voltage- garbage collection areas)

14. Successes

15. Marriage and Consanguinity:
The percentage of reported early marriage increased in the three governorates from 40% to 52% in Sohag from 24.5% to 30.4%in Assiut and from 23% to 48% in Cairo.
Increase in the percentage of women who believe that girls should be married before the age of 20.
More women believed that men should marry after the age of 20.
There is positive change the views of women towards consanguinity except in Cairo where women had positive attitude towards consanguinity increased from 29% to become 45.7% .

16. Family Planning
More than 97% in Assiut and almost 95% in both Cairo and Sohag has positive attitude toward family planning.
85% of the surveyed women in Cairo were using contraceptives, followed by 52% in Sohag and 45.5% in Assiut compared to (72%, 25% and 45.5) during the baseline respectively.