Female Heads of Households

Aziza is a widow with five children. She lives in the outskirts of Minia in a mud house, not far from the quarries. Without any means of support, she has to provide for her growing children. Two of them go to primary and intermediate school in the village of Matay. On her way to and from the village, Aziza has been observing the workers in the quarries. Frequently, they had to leave their work, run to the village to buy spare parts for their tools. She heard them complain that the time spent in the village represented a loss in their earnings as it was deducted from their meager earnings.
Aziza heard of the NCW program to help women heading a household. She approached the NGO in charge of this program in Minia, who helped her complete the questionnaire that would enable her to fulfill the idea that was developing in her mind. She obtained a small loan with which she purchased the necessary tools to establish her small business. Soon, the quarry workers relied solely on Aziza for their supplies. Expanding her newly established venture, she prepared food and drink which she sold to the workers, who soon, learned to rely on her newly improvised “snack shop”.

Aziza has 3 children now attending school regularly and her family lives in relative comfort. Aziza is one of the 6600 women who received a grant under the umbrella of the Female Heads of Household (FHH) program.

This program was preceded by an experimental project, implemented through NGOs. Some 600 women benefited from small loans to carry out small income generating projects, mostly agricultural (sheep and goat breeding, poultry, etc.), groceries, dress making. The results of the project were assessed, and modifications were introduced, based on the lessons learned from this phase. Guidelines were prepared to enhance the capacity of the NGOs involved in the initiative and to streamline the criteria for selection of the NGOs and the grant recipients, as well as the work procedures.
 

The revolving fund of the larger scale project is now in its second phase. During the experimental period and the first phase, the loans were repaid in full (with only one exception). 40 villages, geographically spread over 20 governorates covering the whole of Egypt were included in the project. The grant provided an opportunity for the Council to create awareness among the grant recipients of the importance of having an identification document, of being able to read and write, of having some basics of accounting, of having health awareness.

Several monitoring visits by NCW staff to the small projects have taken place and its gratifying to report that full repayments of the loans have been timely. Only few cases, where the recipients were engaged in poultry raising, faced difficulties in view of the incidence of the bird flu. The President of the Council and the concerned departments and committees of the Council decided to relieve the women who have had to terminate their poultry projects from the obligation of repaying the remaining installments.

It is hoped that once economically empowered, these small project owners will be able to make their voices heard for the well-being of their communities.