Lead Researcher: Hania Sholkamy
Researchers: Mohamed Hassan , Heba Gowayed , Lenka Benova , Mona Bakr
The conditional cash transfer (CCT) pilot in the Cairene slum of Ain es Sira started in May 2009 and was scheduled to last for two years. The Social Research Center (SRC) of the American University in Cairo provided technical assistance to the Egyptian Ministry of Social Solidarity (MOSS) in designing, implementing and evaluating this pilot to inform national social policy decisions. Within the pilot, 380 most vulnerable families with children were registered to participate, receiving monthly cash payments in exchange for fulfilling child development goals related to health and education.
Many developing countries are undergoing rapid socio-economic changes that impact on health and its social distribution. These changes can occur so rapidly that there is a resulting co-existence of diseases of affluence and diseases of poverty. Priority setting for nutritional programmes has focused on the alleviation of undernutrition in low income settings. However, evidence shows that in many Low-and-Middle Income Countries the prevalence of obesity among women is increasing and can coexist with childhood stunting. …
Hania Sholkamy examines the disempowering aspects of women’s work and calls for a more progressive agenda to empower work and re-position it not only as an income generating activity, but as a social role, an ideal, and political engagement. …
The Egyptian Conditional Cash Transfer Pilot Programme (CCT) is a social policy programme implemented by the Ministry of Social Solidarity (MoSS). The Egyptian CCT is designed as a pro-women cash transfer intervention, focusing specifically on aiding women’s well-being. The reason women are put at the centre of the social policy design is the unequal burden of poverty that they, married or not, carry in the context of Egypt’s urban and rural settings. The CCT is part of a raft of positive programme reforms and capacity development of social units (the smallest department of MoSS at the community level) to become community service centres, linking citizens to service providers, be it public, private or NGO. …
Social protection is the right to survive. It is the right to a basic income, shelter, health, food and information, all of which enables people to survive, support their dependents and find a way out of need and destitution. The right to social protection exists for all people, regardless of age, sex or ethnicity. The existence of this right should give people a sense of security even when they are not claiming it. …
The Social Research Center (SRC) hosted a workshop entitled “Introducing Empowering Conditional Cash Transfers to Egypt,” aimed at garnering the insights and experiences of colleagues, both local and international, pertaining to the design and future implementation of a conditional cash transfer (CCT) pilot in Egypt. Experts were asked to facilitate discussion about current CCT programmes and how they can best be adapted to the Egyptian social, political, and economic landscape. …
This paper, presented to the IDS Social Protection for Social Justice Conference, 13-15 April 2011, examines the often neglected role of agents of developing states and the service providers that deliver public goods, specifically transfers, to the poor. It focuses on the case of Egypt. The paper describes the introduction of a new conditional cash transfers programme as a tool for social protection as it is shaped by the views and experiences of the women and men who are social workers and part of a 240,000 strong workforce employed by the Ministry of Social Solidarity (and Justice as it was renamed after the 25 January Revolution). The programme was designed so as to enhance the capabilities and include the participation and creativity of the social worker. …
This chapter describes the landscape of welfare provision in one small Cairo suburb and the roles and relationships that determine this landscape. The chapter focuses specifically on the Ministry of Social Solidarity as the state apparatus mandated with welfare, poverty reduction and social protection; it investigates the range of programs that are offered by the Ministry and by CSOs active in these areas. The purpose of presenting this empirical case study is to understand the dynamics of the relationship between the state and civil society so as to suggest mechanisms for coordination, mutual accountability and more effective welfare provision to better address poverty alleviation and social protection. The case study considers the ideals and norms of each player — the state and civil society — their perceived mission statements and the objectives of their programmes so as to understand the dynamics of their power interplay. …
The aim of this paper, presented at Oxford's Health, Illness and Disease Conferenced held from 3-5 2009 July is to present the findings of an ongoing research project conducted in the Cairene slum of Ain Es-Sira. It examines the effects of financial capacity and conceptions of citizenship on the health-seeking behaviour of mothers for their children. Ain Es-Sira, a slum neighbourhood of approximately 6,000 inhabitants, has been selected to benefit from a pilot study of a conditional cash transfer (CCT) programme. Implemented in dozens of countries across the world, CCT programmes give families living below the poverty line cash and, in exchange, require that families fulfill certain conditions, which are assumed to facilitate the breakdown of the intergenerational transfer of poverty. …