Shining a Light in Upper Egypt: Stories of Empowerment from the Bab Amal Graduation Programme
This blog post was originally published by BRAC UPGI’s website. Please check it here.
By Jake Konig | Content Development Associate, BRAC Ultra-Poor Graduation Initiative
While the COVID-19 crisis has upended families and livelihoods all over the world, participants of the Bab Amal Graduation programme in Egypt have been able to build their resilience and continue their upward trajectory out of extreme poverty. Here are some of their stories.
Shadia lives in Assiut, a region in Egypt where 66 percent of people live in poverty. With a medical condition leaving her husband unable to work, the entire weight of supporting the family fell on Shadia. The household experienced many injustices of extreme poverty — food insecurity, health insecurity, the inability to enrol children in school, and more.
100 kilometres southeast of Assiut in the governorate of Sohag, 65 percent of the population live in poverty, including a woman named Jamila. Jamila fell into extreme poverty after the sudden death of her husband. Without the skills or knowledge needed to bring in a reliable income, Jamila’s life became deeply unstable.
Bab Amal Graduation Programme
In 2018, Shadia and Jamila joined the Bab Amal Graduation programme, an Egyptian poverty alleviation programme modelled on BRAC’s Graduation approach. BRAC’s Ultra-Poor Graduation Initiative (UPGI) is providing technical assistance on the programme in partnership with Sawiris Foundation for Social Development (SFSD), Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), and two implementing NGOs, Giving Without Limits Association (GWLA), and the Egyptian Human Development Association (EHDA). The programme is designed to enable people to develop sustainable livelihoods and create a pathway out of extreme poverty.
The programme provided Shadia and Jamila with a range of tools and resources, including a stipend to provide immediate financial support, the delivery of productive assets, livelihood training on how to generate income with those assets, and life skills training.
The COVID-19 crisis brought forth a massive disruption — but the adaptive nature of the programme addressed this shock by extending the consumption stipend for an additional two months to ensure food security and mitigate the impact of reduced household income on consumption.
Developing resilience in COVID-19
In addition to these measures, phone based coaching, followed by socially distant one-on-one coaching became vital as coaches in the Bab Amal programme were able to safely inform participants on essential hygiene practice and updates about the COVID-19 pandemic, allowing them to pass knowledge to loved ones that protected them from contracting the virus.
“I gained knowledge on how to prevent myself and my family from getting COVID-19.” — Shadia
With this set of holistic and contextualised interventions from the Bab Amal programme, Shadia and Jamila were able to withstand the shock of COVID-19 and build thriving livelihoods.
Caption: Shadia shows off her grocery business in Assiut governorate. Source: BRAC, 2020
Shadia is the owner of a successful grocery business, operating her store out of an empty room in her mother’s house. Through the programme, Shadia learned how to record sales, acquire inventory, track profit, and successfully save income. Now, her groceries are supplying her community with useful commodities while providing for her and her family.
“This business changed my life. With the money I saved, I can enrol my son in school. I have large ambitions to build my business even more.”
After receiving livestock assets from the Bab Amal programme, Jamila very quickly began to expand her business and knowledge — from having no experience in operating a livelihood, Jamilia is now a confident businesswoman in the market who is adept at navigating shifting livestock prices, taking out strategic loans, and creating and utilising savings plans that will allow her to continue expanding her business.
Caption: Jamila tends to her livestock as part of her initial asset transfer from the Bab Amal programme. Source: BRAC, 2020.
Jamila is using her newfound experience in the programme to make a positive impact on her community and within her family — she often mentors other women in her village on the importance of saving, and imparts wisdom gained by building her livelihood to support other women who are building their own.
In addition to bolstering financial stability and promoting awareness around COVID-19 safety measures, the Bab Amal programme also leverages its life skills component to empower participants to break harmful, often multigenerational practices such as child marriage. After learning more on the dangers of such practices from the programme sessions and her coach, Jamila decided to take action.
“I very much benefited from the life skills training, the information I got about early marriage increased my awareness. I have postponed the marriage of my engaged daughter. I was about to let her get married while she is less than 18 years old, but when I learned the problems that she may be exposed to, I decided that I won’t let her get married before the legal age.” — Jamila
Shadia and Jamila’s stories demonstrate the power and importance of investing in women, and that when a poverty alleviation initiative like the Bab Amal programme is designed to be both holistic and contextualised, even those living in regions of pervasive and intergenerational poverty can propel themselves on an upward trajectory towards a safe, fulfilling, and hopeful future.
References
- BRAC UPGI. (2021). Egypt. Accessible: https://bracupgi.org/research-and-resources/climate-change/egypt/
- BRAC UPGI. (2021). About BRAC’s Graduation Approach. Accessible: https://bracupgi.org/about-bracs-graduation-approach/#about-the-approach
- Sawiris Foundation. (2021). Accessible: https://www.sawirisfoundation.org/
- J-PAL. (2021). Accessible: https://www.povertyactionlab.org/
- BRAC UPGI. (2021). Coaching in the Ultra-Poor Graduation Approach. BRAC UPGI. Accessible: https://bracupgi.org/research-and-resources/coaching/coaching-in-the-ultra-poor-graduation-approach/
- Haque, R., and Mahbub, U. (2020). Meeting Basic Needs of the World’s Poorest During a Time of Crisis: Part 1 — The Good Feed. BRAC UPGI. Accessible: https://bracupgi.org/news-updates/covid-19/meeting-basic-needs-of-the-worlds-poorest-during-a-time-of-crisis-part-1-the-good-feed/
- BRAC. (2021). The Last Card. BRAC Graduation Stories. Accessible: http://graduationstories.brac.net/the-last-card/
