Sayed Ahmed Khailfa - Script (pdf 81Kb) - Board of Mission Overseas

7. Some years after joining the local group of farmers formed by
CEOSS Sayed stood for election to the local committee and some
time later he became the local chairman.
8. My programme was to secure irrigation water for all of the local
farmers and bring about changes that would reduce the cost of
tilling and leveling the soil to half of the existing cost,” explains
Sayed.
9. To achieve such a programme involved not only getting local
farmers to speak with one voice but meeting with government
officials and negotiating with Egypt’s deputy minister of agriculture,
the irrigation supervisor for the area and the local head of land
improvement.
10. To help them CEOSS provided negotiation skills workshops,
communications and networking sessions and facilitated preparation
meetings that gave Sayed and his farming colleagues the confidence
to argue their case successfully.
11. After many meetings the government agreed to reopen and
maintain two irrigation channels that would provide fresh water
straight from the Nile to the farmer’s fields in Zawyet El Nawya.
12. In another agreement an arrangement was reached that if the
farmers joined together as a group and hired tillers and other
machinery directly from the government they would receive a
substantial discount as well as getting better quality equipment.
13. And alongside all the negotiating and lobbying skills CEOSS has also
helped with the more traditional development methods by providing
better seed, introducing new farming techniques and reducing the