CAIRO: Egypt produces 40,000 tons of municipal waste each day with an estimated total of 15 million tons a year, according to the Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency (EEAA). Much of this is left in the streets or burned, creating unsanitary environments and poor health conditions in communities.
A Canadian environmental development project has been recognized for cleaning the streets of Minya and Ismailia and breaking down gender barriers in the process.
The Community Environmental Action Project (CENACT) has worked with 36 Community Development Associations (CDAs) in Lower and Upper Egypt to set up small waste management businesses.
With the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) funding the project, each CDA was given money to purchase a tractor and trailer.
“Motivators then went door to door convincing their neighbors to pay LE 2-3 a month to have their garbage collected and properly disposed of.
“I’m completely satisfied with the performance of the project, it’s had a great impact on the targeted communities, said Islam Abdel-Meguid, deputy of the NGO unit of the EEAA which has worked in collaboration with CENACT.
Having initially been met with skepticism from people in the communities, 70 percent of the CDAs are now making a net profit and the number of subscribers continues to grow.
However, the real success story is not of cleaner streets, but of improvements in the lives of those who have helped clean them.
CENACT was given the award for Gender Equality Achievement by the Center for Intercultural Learning at a ceremony in Vancouver, Canada on May 21 in recognition of their success in improving the status of women in Minya and Ismailia.
CIDA regularly stresses the importance of including women in order for development projects to be successful.
“The chances of a project being viable over the short term and sustainable over the long term are greater if women are involved, says CENACT Field Director Mary Ellen MacCallum.
Because it is considered inappropriate for men to knock on doors and enter homes where women are alone, the CENACT staff realized that women could play a vital role as motivators.
This women-to-women interaction was very effective at recruiting new subscribers says Doaa Hussein, social development and gender specialist at CENACT.
“Women in the households play an active role in the decision-making process. They are influencing and convincing their husbands to pay for the service.
The female motivators eventually took on wider roles and responsibilities in the CDAs. Many became leaders while others began riding in the trucks with the male drivers and laborers to ensure the quality of their work.
At first the CDAs only gave paid positions to men and the female motivators were brought on as volunteers.
“They justified it by saying that they were not generating profit and couldn’t pay women, says Hussein.
However, this policy changed once the financial incentives of hiring women became clear.
“Now they realize that it is because of the active role of women that they are making a profit, otherwise they would not have earned a penny, Hussein explains.
However, acceptance of women working in waste management did not come easily.
“Others in the community would ask, ‘Why are they resorting to working in garbage? Don’t they have any work to do in their households? Why don’t they stay at home and take care of their children?’ says Hussein.
“But they realize that it is not just garbage, it is their environment, it is their health, it is the health of their children. They are working to make their communities healthier.
Many of the traditional and rural communities in Minya were especially resistant to female involvement.
“At the beginning it was very hard. Most of the people in Minya had no idea what we were talking about when we discussed gender rights, says Hany Tawfik, project manager for CENACT.
“The women in Minya have never had a chance to play an important role in society. It has been a great achievement to get women working outside of their houses, says Tawfik.
In the face of strong resistance in rural communities from men and women alike, the CENACT staff takes heart in the personal accomplishments of women involved in the project.
In the village of Tookh El-Gabal in the Deir Mawas district of Minya, one of the local CDAs’ chairpersons is a woman. After rising through the ranks of the organization she went on to run for a seat in the local People’s Council.
Another success story can be seen by looking at the case of Hoda, a woman from the small village of El Borgaya 7 km from Minya.
Hoda worked as a motivator in her conservative community. Along with another woman, she convinced 280 households to join the project and pay subscriptions.
Initially working as a volunteer, Hoda was eventually hired on at LE 125 a month. It was the first time she had ever worked outside of her house.
“I started as a volunteer doing charity work for the CDA and now I am one of the key staff and a decision-maker in the project . Now I can support my husband, my children and myself, she said in a 2007 interview with CENACT staff.
While considerable changes have been made in the lives of the women working in the project, everyone involved hopes that changing attitudes will benefit the lives of all women in the communities.
“We have insisted on new attitudes towards the status of women and were seeing changes. But we’re stressing to the communities that women’s rights should not be restricted to the field of environment, they extend across all fields, said Abdel-Meguid of the EEAA.
