Egypt: One Village At A Time - Women's Literacy Project
I posted this in the Atheist/Agnostic group but thought it might fit here as well.
From Egypt Today magazine, May 2014, the story of 3 high-school girls who started a women's literacy project in their rural village.
From 2005-09 I lived/worked in Egypt. I lived in Alexandria but my job site was out in the Nile Delta, past a string of farm villages like the one in the article. People there tend to be VERY conservative and set in their ways. So, yep, pretty much like an American farming village. That's one thing that makes the story so interesting for me.
Egypt Today is a good source if you're interested in Egypt or the Middle East. It tends to take a liberal POV and often pushes the boundaries. When I lived there, the magazine did a special issue on FGM, usually a very taboo subject in Egypt.
From the article:
With their school teacher Rabab Mohamed, and some help from local education initiatives from the technology giant Intel, these three girls have overcome cultural barriers and community resistance to set up a literacy program for the women in El-Agamyeen...
The girls say that they live in a culture that does not fully approve of a girl’s education, so most girls are taught the basics and then forced to leave school to find a husband and start a family. “Which made it a terribly difficult task, since it consisted mostly of convincing the people of our village,” Sayed says...
At first, the people of El-Agamyeen were not welcoming at all and looked upon the girls “as the aliens who are breaking our social norms,” Mahmoud recalls. However, after explaining the benefits for the community as a whole, “they were persuaded and most of them became really helpful in the whole process,” adds Sultan. “Face-to-face interaction was the best way to do it,” Mohamed says.
The literacy program students range from young women in their early 20s, widows in their 40s to grandmothers in their 60s.
http://egypttoday.com/blog/2014/05/14/one-village-time/