for pdf - Save the Children

A Strong Commitment to the
COVER PHOTO: MICHAEL BISCEGLIE
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Poorest Children and Mothers
Save the Children
has been addressing the critical needs of
children and families in the Middle East
since 1953, when our work in Lebanon
began. That work expanded to the West
Bank and Gaza in the 1970s and to
Egypt and Jordan in the 1980s.
In the Middle East, where Save the Children has worked for nearly
50 years, the children and families most in need face . . .
• Poverty and lack of services to the poor, especially among Palestinian refugees and other displaced persons.
• Inadequate educational systems, with poor teaching methodologies, outdated curricula, large classrooms,
and minimal recreational facilities.
• Unsafe water and sanitation systems.
• Rural/urban migration because of unemployment or unrest, separating and displacing families.
• A rapidly growing youth population.
• Limited but increasing citizen participation in governance.
• Political unrest, economic instability, and violence, especially in the West Bank and Gaza.
With extensive programmatic experience and policy
expertise, today Save the Children is a leader and
an innovator in the Middle East, earning the
respect and trust of local communities, partners, and
government ministries that collaborate with us on
behalf of over a half-million of the region’s neediest
residents—children and their mothers.
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Strategies for Self-Sufficiency
PHOTO: WILLIAM FOLEY
A mother and her child participate in Save the Children’s health and other programs in Lebanon.
In each country where we work, Save the Children’s
education, health, economic opportunities, and
humanitarian assistance initiatives empower children
and adults, promoting their self-sufficiency and
contributing to a more stable civil society.
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and Real and Lasting Change
TOP PHOTO: MICHAEL BISCEGLIE; BOTTOM PHOTO: FIELD STAFF
Save the Children
creates real and lasting change
for children and their mothers in the
Middle East first by investing in their
education and then improving their
health and economic opportunities,
while addressing their physical and
emotional well-being.
Top: A young girl takes a drink of water from a well constructed by Save the Children in the West Bank.
Below: A girl takes her studies seriously in a Save the Children education program in Egypt.
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PHOTO: MICHAEL BISCEGLIE
First, invest in
EDUCATION
1.
Children and youth ages 0-25 make up nearly 60 percent of the population in the
Middle East. The many obstacles to their growth and development—poverty,
political unrest, economic instability, and an inadequate and unequal educational
system—can be mitigated with education.
Because learning begins at birth and
continues throughout life, Save the
Children’s education programs are
intergenerational and interrelated. They
are unique in their emphasis on the
equal participation of girls, the
engagement of adolescents, and the
promotion of understanding and
goodwill among communities. Key
areas of programming are early
childhood development (ages 0-5),
primary education, especially for girls
(ages 6-13), youth development (ages
14-19), and adult literacy (ages 19+).
A Save the Children early childhood development center in Egypt promotes
school readiness.
“My name is Eman. I’m married with five
children and working as a first grade teacher
[in Jordan]. I was introduced to Save the
Children’s Early Childhood Development
program while volunteering…I was trained on
how to deal with young children and the
importance of active learning and play on their
development. I enjoy the activities and believe
in their positive effects on children.”
—A volunteer mother in a Save the
Children early childhood development
program in Jordan
Early childhood development
programs stimulate growth and
development and prepare young
children for school. A “learning through
play” approach is used with the
children, and the important role of early
childhood education for school preparedness is
emphasized among the children’s families. In our
programs in Egypt, for example, nurseries have trained
caregivers. In Jordan, caregivers—often the children’s
mothers, relatives, and community leaders—are trained
to improve childhood nutrition and provide healthy care,
supporting very young children’s school readiness as well
as enhancing their own ability to earn income.
And in the West Bank and Gaza, early childhood
development centers help maintain the children’s sense
of routine and continuity.
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TOP PHOTO: MICHAEL BISCEGLIE; BOTTOM PHOTO: HEBA HAJJ
Primary education programs increase children’s
access to schools, especially for girls. In Egypt, a girl’s
education program offers scholarships to ensure that girls
attend and stay in school. Health and nutrition training
are part of the school curriculum, focusing on factors
that keep children (especially low-income young girls) out
of school, and teaching behaviors—especially nutrition
and health practices—that facilitate learning. In the
West Bank and Gaza, support to the educational
system has enabled hundreds of young people to obtain
an education where no facilities existed before or where
overcrowded and three-shift systems were in place.
Save the Children’s Middle East programs, especially
in Jordan and Lebanon, are pioneers in youth
development programming. Youth ages 15-24 make
up more than 30 percent of the population in the Middle
East, and Save the Children is preparing them for their
responsibilities as the next generation of leaders, parents,
educators, and businesspeople.
In Jordan, our Partnership for Change Initiative breaks
new ground in life skills development training. Another
innovative program, INJAZ, builds career development
and entrepreneurial skills through public-private
sector networks. In some of the most disadvantaged
communities in Lebanon, a Community Youth
Development Program teaches youth how to address
issues that directly affect them in a constructive way. Also
in Lebanon, our Economic Opportunities for Youth
A young girl in Hebron whose family places a high
value on education benefits from Save the
Children’s programs.
Program helps some of the most disadvantaged
youth reach their potential through interpersonal,
entrepreneurial, and economic training. In the West
Bank and Gaza, youth clubs help adolescents channel
their idle time, stress, and energies into productive and
safe behavior and contribute to their own communities.
In Jordan, a groundbreaking adult literacy
program—Arab Women Speak Out—promotes women’s
training and education in order to empower them to
make informed decisions and contribute to their own
households and communities.
Youth in a Save the Children program in Lebanon
read the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, on
which all our international work is based.
“I wouldn’t know what to do if the center
wasn’t there….My mother can’t read so…the
library supervisor helps me with my homework
and helps me understand difficult lessons like
math—the subject I hate most.”
—A 9-year-old boy who regularly
attends a Save the Children child center
in the Natheef area of Jordan
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2.
Then, improve
HEALTH
Save the Children’s health programs protect children and their mothers from
preventable disease and premature death. Through community action, the quality of
and access to services to marginalized communities are improved.
An area of special focus and expertise is environmental
health. According to recent World Bank reports, the
Middle East contains 5 percent of the world’s population
but holds only one percent of the world’s water. Only 52
percent of the population has access to clean water and
sanitation. Save the Children is an innovator in
environmental health in this region, using community
action and program expertise to protect water supplies
and a clean environment and supporting municipal
services that provide safe water, proper sewage disposal,
and sustainable solid waste management systems.
In the West Bank and Gaza, community-based
health programs improve access to and quality of
health care services and facilities, especially for mothers
and children. These model programs also promote lifestyle
changes that help children to live, learn, and play
in healthy, safe ways. Environmental health education
campaigns—stressing the connection between health
and hygiene—build community awareness of and
action on behalf of environmental issues and solutions.
Save the Children also helps build wells for clean
drinking water and to restore water and sanitation
systems. Agricultural and irrigation training
helps families better conserve and utilize scarce
natural resources.
PHOTOS LEFT AND RIGHT: MICHAEL BISCEGLIE
A Save the Children-trained volunteer talks with an Egyptian mother about healthy practices and
behaviors that protect her life and promote her baby’s growth and development.
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Throughout the Middle East as well
as the rest of the developing world,
Save the Children has taken the lead
in giving mothers the tools they
need so they and their children can
survive and thrive. A key focus is on
maternal and child health. In
Egypt, children and their parents
benefit from simple, sensible
solutions to the health of the very
young—children under the age
of 5—through immunizations,
vitamin supplementation, and
nutrition training. In Jordan, a
groundbreaking urban preventive
health program for mothers and
children was established to
bring health workers right into
communities for quarterly visits,
monitoring and guiding mothers and
their newborns. The West Bank
and Gaza program also brings
preventive health services right to
families in the heart of communities.
Two boys drink water from wells provided by Save the Children, which
works on water projects and sanitation systems in Hebron and elsewhere
in the West Bank.
“We had a variety of activities. We had sports and exercises to
strengthen and tone our muscles. We learned about music,
songs as well as musical notes. We had lectures and discussions
on pollution and a healthy environment….Health education
included first-aid procedures as well as those for choking and
broken bones. This camp really changed my life.”
—A young girl who attended a Save the Children
school day camp in Jordan
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And ECONOMIC
OPPORTUNITIES
3.
Jordan and Lebanon are classified by the World Bank as medium-income countries.
Egypt is classified as a low-income country while the West Bank and Gaza’s
economy has been devastated by the ongoing violence, internal blockades, curfews,
and closures. But the economies of all these places have two things in common: a
large gender discrepancy in earned income and a high cost of living compared to
family income and inflation rates.
As her daughter watches, a mother bakes bread for her tiny
business, which she runs by participating in a Save the Children
microfinance program in the West Bank.
PHOTO: MICHAEL BISCEGLIE
In the Middle East as well as in the Newly
Independent States of the former Soviet
Union, Save the Children is a regional
leader in woman-focused microfinance,
helping mothers earn income from their
tiny businesses in order to better provide
for their children. Our signature innovation,
Group Guaranteed Lending and Savings, is
a proven poverty lending strategy. We also
build local microfinance institutions to
promote self-sufficiency, strengthening their
ability to provide small initial loans—from
$30-$250—to groups of women, who then
guarantee each other’s loans in order to
qualify for additional loans. Loan repayment
rates in all our Middle East Group Guaranteed
Lending and Savings microfinance programs
are at 96 percent or higher.
GROUP GUARANTEED LENDING AND SAVINGS:
Growth and Success for Some of the World’s Poorest Mothers and Children
Performance Indicator 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002
Active clients 19,000 55,800 76,400 90,000 140,000 175,000
Children benefiting 76,000 223,000 305,000 360,000 560,000 700,000
Privately funded program budget $333,868 $338,700 $268,000 $278,000 $324,000 $333,000
Total program budget $6.50MM $7.60MM $8.40MM $8.47MM $9.98MM $4.61MM*
Private cost to reach 1 child $3.00 $1.50 $0.88 $0.77 $0.53 $0.47
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* The decrease in grant funding for the year 2002 reflects Save the Children’s success at supporting our partners’ sustainability. One of the goals of our economic
opportunities program is to establish MFIs so that they can provide client services independently over the long term. In the Mideast, many of our partners achieved that
sustainability and now operate independently, accounting for their own program costs in their own books as well as reducing Save the Children’s loan capital costs. Their
success enables us, with the help of our donors, to expand our programs to other communities where our work is urgently needed.

In Jordan, Save the
Children established a
microfinance institution
called Microfund for
Women that provides
loans to low-income
women and families.
Other programs have
become self-sustaining,
including the Bani Hamida
weaving project for rural
women and the Jordan
River Designs urban
project in refugee camps.
Both later merged into the
Jordan River Foundation,
chaired by Her Majesty
Queen Rania Al-Abdullah.
In addition, the Jordanian
Women’s Development
Society has become a new
not-for-profit limited
liability company that now
operates nationally.
PHOTO: WILLIAM FOLEY
A mother in Jordan proudly shows her wares from her small shop, which she supports
by participating in a Save the Children microfinance program.
In Egypt, Save the Children’s growing microfinance
program has the potential to reach more than 100,000
clients and to become an independent microfinance
institution, Al Tadamun. In Lebanon, Al Majmoua, a
local lending organization we created, continues to
open new branch offices and grow its active client base,
now serving 5,000 women as well as men and
benefiting some 20,000 of their sons and daughters. In
the West Bank and Gaza, Save the Children provides
financial services to low-income women and has
established a local microfinance institution called
Palestine for Credit and Development (FATEN). Women’s
income is especially important in the West Bank and
Gaza, where the ongoing crisis has cost husbands’ jobs
and put the burden on wives to earn income and help
meet their children’s and families’ needs.
A mother from Tarquimia Village in the
southern West Bank attended 200 hours
of training on dressmaking and fashion
design that Save the Children offered.
As a result of this course, she works at
home and designs trousers and jackets
and then sells them to help provide for
her seven children. Her income is
critical since her husband, who used to
be a laborer before the current crisis,
now is jobless.
—A true story from a Save the
Children microfinance program
in the West Bank and Gaza
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Our work has been both
collaborative and innovative:
• Working with many other
nongovernmental organizations to
organize convoys of food, clothing,
and other necessities to West Bank
towns under closure.
• Contributing expertise to the
needs assessments being conducted
in the immediate aftermath of the
recent violence.
4.
And then address their physical and
emotional well-being through
HUMANITARIAN
RESPONSE
Children are at the center of all that Save the Children does. The principles of the
UN International Convention on the Rights of the Child govern our international
programs, and nowhere are these principles harder at work than in the West Bank
and Gaza, where Save the Children is the largest international development
organization working on behalf of the children and is the lead agency among the
International Save the Children Alliance members.
• Creating new programs, including the
Community Psychosocial Support
Project to restore the emotional wellbeing
of children, the Emergency
Employment Generation Program
to alleviate crisis-related economic
impoverishment by creating jobs that
rebuild community infrastructures, and
the Community Services Program
to provide vital education and health
services to 28 disadvantaged
communities in northern and southern
West Bank and Gaza.
PHOTO: MICHAEL BISCEGLIE
A Hathaleen Bedouin mother and child belong to a nomadic
tribe with whom Save the Children has built a strong
relationship and trust through our programs in the West Bank
and Gaza.
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Solid Results for
Children and Mothers,
HIGH RETURN ON YOUR INVESTMENT
Private donors play a key role in the success of Save the Children’s mission. Private
investments from individuals, foundations, and corporations enable us to leverage
grants (current ratio of 1:5) and expand the scope and success of our impact and
influence on behalf of children and mothers in the Middle East. Here are sample
opportunities to invest in needy children and mothers in the Middle East:
GOAL STRATEGY ONE-YEAR INVESTMENT
To provide safe and quality early childhood
development and day care services for 825
children ages 0-6 in 12 communities in Egypt
To ensure proper age-appropriate physical
development of school-aged children,
ensuring a healthy mind in a healthy body
in Egypt
To improve the quality of early childhood
development for children ages 3-6 in Jordan
To create employment opportunities for youth
ages 14-24 in Jordan
To empower youth with self-development
and community participation skills (leadership,
communication, and problem solving) in
30 communities in Lebanon
To develop the economic, entrepreneurial, and
interpersonal skills of 1,300 youth ages 14-24
to better equip them to enter the job market
in Lebanon
To improve the skills of teachers, community
volunteers, and parents on their access to 100
disabled and special needs children injured in
the long-term violence in the West Bank
and Gaza
To strengthen and sustain environmental
health services and systems, enhance
community awareness and protection of these
services and systems, and reduce diarrheal and
other diseases resulting from poor water and
sanitation for 16,800 people in the West
Bank and Gaza
• Organize training programs for 46 providers
• Establish and equip 33 nurseries
• Organize and run a mobile health unit to
perform physical checkups to 15 schools in
4 villages
• Produce 500 copies of the first-ever early
childhood development reference book for
us by 52 teachers in 48 Ministry of Education
kindergartens serving 1,250 children
• Sponsor 100 interns to strengthen their skills
for a more productive and successful entry
into the workforce
• Construct and equip 15 youth centers
benefiting 1,500 youth, providing them with
safe locations and constructive outlets to
learn, play, and develop social skills
• Sponsor training programs to 15 institutions
to deliver youth training and empower
institutions
• Support inclusive education programs
and infrastructures
• Rehabilitate water network in Ein Abous
and Huwara in northern West Bank and
conduct system management/ maintenance
training
• Construct new sewage networks in
Al Salateen in Gaza
$50,000
$100,000
$50,000
$20,000
$50,000
$ 60,000
$40,000
$20,000
$280,000
$180,000
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Why Save the Children?
• A premiere nonprofit global child-assistance organization
working in more than 40 countries for 70 years, 50 of them
in the Middle East
• A recognized champion of civil society, serving over 600
nongovernmental organizations in Egypt and issuing 70
recent subgrants through our NGO Service Center
• Regional leader in woman-focused microfinance, with
more than 100,000 loans since 1996
• The largest private international development organization
in the West Bank and Gaza, with a $30 million investment
in the last five years, and the lead agency among the
International Save the Children Alliance members working
in the war-torn territories
AT A GLANCE
SAVE THE CHILDREN IN THE MIDDLE EAST . . .
History First program: Lebanon in 1953
Expansion: West Bank and Gaza in 1973 Egypt in 1982 Jordan in 1985
Field Offices Egypt Jordan Lebanon West Bank and Gaza
Beneficiaries
Programs
532,700 children and adults
Egypt-125,000 Lebanon-17,000
Jordan-35,700 West Bank and Gaza-355,000
Education: early childhood development, nonformal (nongovernment) primary education,
youth development and leadership, and adult literacy
Health: maternal and child health, nutrition, water resource management,
water and sanitation
Economic opportunities: microfinance for women and business development services
Humanitarian response: physical care and protection and emotional healing and well-being
Advocacy: promoting policies and programs that help children and their mothers
Budget
A minimum annual private investment of $1.2 million (only 7 percent of total budget) underpins
a total annual program portfolio of almost $17.8 million. In addition to private contributions,
the budget is supported through grants, contracts, program sponsorship, and services.
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PHOTO: SARDORI GROUP, INC.
Firyal Snounu, a Program Manager in Save the Children’s West Bank and Gaza Field Office, speaking about programs
and policies that support the world’s poorest mothers and children.
Other ways you can help are to make a contribution
to the region or to a specific country where we work. . .
Ask your employer to match your contribution.
Become a corporate partner or licensee.
Provide “gifts in kind”—books, health and hygiene
materials, computer equipment, or other materials the
field offices may need.
Advocate for programs and policies that improve
children’s and mother’s lives.
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PHOTO: MICHAEL BISCEGLIE
PHOTO: MICHAEL BISCEGLIE
Children practice their theatrical skills during a puppet show in a
Save the Children program in Egypt.
Save the Children is a global nonprofit child-assistance organization serving nearly 12 million children
and adults and working in more than 40 countries worldwide, including the United States. Founded in 1932,
our mission is to make lasting, positive change in the lives of children in need. Save the Children also is a
member of the International Save the Children Alliance, which is a worldwide network of 30 independent Save
the Children organizations working in more than 100 countries to ensure the well-being and protect the rights
of children everywhere. Information concerning Save the Children Federation, Inc., including financial,
licensing, or charitable purposes, may be obtained, without cost, by writing to Save the Children Federation,
Inc., Assistant Corporate Secretary, 54 Wilton Road, Westport, Connecticut, 06880, or by contacting us at
1.800.728.3843 (1.800.SAVETHECHILDREN) or www.savethechildren.org.
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