RHET 102

Causes:

- Culture

• Women’s responsibilities are limited to the household chores and farm work
• Favoring boys as more advantageous than girls in diverse aspects of life, one of which is education
• Early marriages

-Lack of resources

• Families face economic strains

*Why is this issue important ?

• Egypt among the top ten countries in the world in terms of illiteracy as 35% of the population cannot read or write
• 45% of girls and women over the age of 15 years-old are illiterate (2005 Human Development Report issued by the United Nations Development Program)

*Thus, the most effective way to deal with this huge problem of female illiteracy in Upper Egypt is through conducting literacy programs and projects which empower women and which make them active agents in the families and communities to which they belong

Solution

1. Literacy programs that provide empowerment

1. ‘Alam Simsim’

• tackles gender stereotypes
• provides simple lessons on numeracy, health and education which can change behaviors and shape skills
• watched by 61% of children under age eight (Middle East Media Research Bureau)

2.The Italian Community Development Project

• tackles the idea that women’s education is useless as they can never work outside their homes
• micro-credit program conducted by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs
• provides micro-credit loans for women to launch small husbandry, handcrafts and commercial businesses
• creates a need for women to learn; running their own small businesses
• 729 women have benefited from these loans

Female Illiteracy In Upper Egypt... A Disease ??

Sandra Boutros

Solution

2. Literacy programs that provide agency

1.The Association for the Development and Enhancement of Women

• focuses on the lack of resources
• holds free literacy classes for girls and women
• runs leisure programmes to motivate girls to attend

2.The ‘Century Project’

• conducted by the Ministry of Education and the General Authority for Literacy and Adult Education
• trains 50,000 college graduates to teach 1.5 million illiterates a year

Conclusion

• Literacy programs that empower women and help them to become positive participants in their communities are the most effective way to solve the problem of female illiteracy in Upper Egypt.
• They tackle the cultural misconceptions and the lack of resources, which are the main causes of the problem.

Solution

3. Literacy programs that work on institutional reform

1.The U.S. Agency for International Development’s Girls’ Improved Learning Outcomes Project

• attracts girls to schools and reduce the number of dropouts
• trains teachers to more enthusiastically engage students, through integrating more cooperative learning and adding new resources to the instruction process
• trains administrators to arrange plans that can deal with the local obstacles to girls’ education (example)

Limitations of the female literacy programs:

• need a long time before they can produce any tangible results
• the problem is too deep-rooted and cannot be managed by a relatively small number of programs

However, GALAE head Hussein Abbas states :

• there are many obstacles to the success of these projects
• but “no one said overcoming a big problem like illiteracy would be easy”