Partnership Ref.:	EGY06
Commenced:	25/03/2022
Funding Status:	Fully Funded
Partnership Type:	Training / Education, Orphans & Vulnerable Children, Evangelism / Church Planting
Funding Size:	$8,000 - $14,999
Annual Budget:	US$ 13,200
Connected To:	EGY01

Partnership Overview

Soul Salvation Church in the city of Assiut is one of the largest, most influential churches in Upper Egypt. It is non-denominational and has many ministries. One of its leaders was the father of the son-in-law of one of our other Egyptian partners, NB. He was an influential leader and well known and respected in the Christian community in Egypt. Under his leadership the church had begun a vocational training centre. In mid-2021, he unfortunately died from COVID-19 and this key man was taken from his role. Fortunately, there is a good team involved in leading the ministry. 

There are two major components to the vocational training:

A sewing centre
The sewing centre aims to train young women and ladies to gain skills, so they are able to get a job. The sewing centre is located inside the church building and to date they have trained 30 women. The type of people attending the sewing centre are women and young ladies who do not have a job and for some of them, their husbands are jobless too. Either way, they have a very low income and are among the poorest of the poor. By learning to sew they are able to find employment to increase their income and support their families. 

The church also has a sewing workshop and some of the women have been selected to work in this enterprise and earn an income for their families. The goal is to train as many as possible so they can support their family and meet their daily needs. Of the 30 women trained so far, nine have been selected to work in the workshop. In the future they will train more as long as there are materials and the budget to keep the workshop running.  

Education tutoring centres
The church operates two education centres located outside the church in two very poor areas, el Arbeen and el Nazla. In these centres they educate and help poor children with their lessons. These programmes are after school tuition centres. The type of children that attend are primary age kids who live in the very poor areas of Assiut. The parents of these children are not able to spend money for their education and need help. Because their parents are not educated enough and do not have permanent jobs and because they are largely uneducated themselves, they place little value on education. Often, they send their children to work instead of studying or helping them to study. Because they live in poor areas, their schools have a very low education system and the teachers there are not well qualified. 

In the centres they are assisting the children in three subjects: maths, English and Arabic from grade 1 to grade 9. Currently they are tutoring over 1,000 children at the two centres during the week. They concentrate on giving them the assistance they need in those subjects and also provide them Bible lessons to help them understand how to live well. They also try to meet the parents during the week to help them understand the importance of educating the children and how to interact and communicate with their kids.

They also assist the children with school materials and sometimes clothing as well. 

History of Partnership

BHW's Executive Chairman met NB a number of years ago and continued to follow his ministry. In December 2014 BHW's New Partnership Facilitator visited Egypt and spent time with N and S to research opportunities for partnership. Following this visit, in early 2015 BHW commenced partnership with the Vocational Training Centre (EGY01). During the training the team got to know the students very well and their family circumstances. Many of them, especially the girls, were really struggling. This is an issue in their culture as many of them were going to get married but they were too poor to fulfil their obligations. They would therefore spend time with the mothers to try and find ways to assist them. The pressure on their families was intense and they would often get into serious debt because of the marriage. In 2018 we established a separate fund (EGY05) so that more people could be assisted. Following on from this, we have subsequently commenced projects with NB to support refugees (EGY05a), assist drug addicts (EGY05b), and started up a loan programme (EGY05c). 

In early 2022, NB, who had a close association with these people at Soul Salvation Church, approached BHW to see if we would be willing to assist the operation of this vital programme.  

Beneficiaries

There are two main groups of direct beneficiaries:
1) The women who are trained in sewing and of course, their families
2) The children who are part of the tutoring programme and their families in the long term. More than 1,000 children at one time are in the programme.  

What We Like About The Partnership

The beneficiaries are the type of people that are our main focus.
The programme is already running so they have taken the initiative.
They have great people leading the programme.
We have a highly trusted, existing partner in place to oversee the operations.  

 

Key People

Leadership Profile

The person who introduced this partnership to us is NB, an existing, highly trusteed partner. 

His son-in-law, PBA, will be the liaison person. It is his father who began this ministry and who was the leader of the Soul Salvation Church that operates the programme. PBA is 31 years old and works as a communication engineer as a full-time job. He says, "my passion is to serve the Lord with all my heart using my talents and time I can give." He has been serving in the media section at church for a long time and serving in Sunday school as well. He is involved in the Sunday worship team playing guitar and sometimes the piano as well. He has been married to NB's daughter for 7 years and they have one daughter who is 2 years old now. His wife works as a teacher. 

 

Vision And Annual Strategy

Vision 

The church is investing in its people to see the local Christians be able to become economically self-sustaining. This is a major issue in this country where Christians are a significant minority and an oppressed people. 

Strategy

The strategy based around the two components outlined above; a sewing training workshop and a small sewing enterprise to employ some women, and two tutoring centres for children to better equip them for their school lessons and give them confidence in their normal studies at school. 

 

Annual Budget

The annual amount sent by BHW is US$13,200 and this will go into a pool of funds, the balance of which is raised locally, and be split between the sewing programme and the children's tutoring programmes.