(1) Working with the governmental Rural Guides
The Rural Guides are qualified women who hold a medium or higher education certificate and play an important role in community development. Their role is to tackle the problems that affect women who are contributing to the welfare of their working animals through raising their awareness.
The main work of rural guides concentrates on women’s health. As members of the villages, this gives them direct contact with women and gains their trust.
The Brooke Egypt is working with more than 143 Rural Guides in Alexandria, Luxor, Edfu, Aswan, Marsa Matrouh and Mansoura regions. Normally, the main work of Rural Guides concentrates on women’s health in their regions.
Simple training courses were held for the Rural Guides in the different locations where BHA Egypt operates, and thus they are able to help Brooke in the following ways:
- Disseminating messages about the animal welfare to a wide range of owners including women.
- Arranging meetings with animal owners and users.
- Helping to select the Community Health Workers.
- Locating more places for the mobile clinics to deliver their services.
- Arranging saddle repairing campaigns and other social events.
- Offering assistance in counting the equine number in specific areas.
(2) Adult Literacy classes
Illiteracy eradication classes
In 2007, BHA Egypt developed an animal welfare syllabus to be used for adult education, in cooperation with the Government’s Adult Illiteracy Eradication programme. The BHA Egypt adult literacy curriculum was first tested in the Aswan region, and, after proving very successful, the approach was extended to include Edfu, Alexandria, and Matrouh regions. There are now 200 classes, with an average number of 10 students in each class.
The project started in 2007 after the Brooke team in Aswan initiated cooperation with the Community Development Association; the latter generously dedicated five adult literacy classes and assigned teachers for Animal Welfare. Following this initiative the BHA introduced its first official animal welfare curriculum, receiving an invitation from the educational administration in Aswan to join their adult literacy programme. In 2008 the programme was launched with 21 classes supported by Brooke’s full sponsorship for the production of an animal welfare booklet, which achieved remarkable success. This further encouraged the Adult Literacy Programme in Aswan to agree on including another 20 classes by the end of 2013.
The BHA Egypt uses various media to communicate its values across the animal-owning communities. The Adult Education programme is the first of these approaches: through the attractive curriculum, that delivers the concept of animal welfare, we may achieve our key goal combined with eradicating illiteracy in our targeted areas.
Working with the Illiteracy Eradication bodies in several regions the programme was established in Edfu in 2010 with six classes, and in 2011 an additional 20 classes initiated the programme in Alexandria.
The new Brooke curriculum, in its colorful format, is used by the vets who organize training courses for teachers, with final assessments and questionnaires to measure the outcome. The teachers organize classes for adult students which last 3 months, again using the BHA Egypt curriculum.
(3) Reaching the next generation
This group deals with animals in several ways. For example, at the Helwan brick kilns in Cairo, children from 8 -13 years old drive donkey carts with very heavy loads of bricks; elsewhere children are working in the fields.
BHA Egypt seeks out these children at their places of work, in order to change their attitude towards animals.
Our messages are simple and clear - puppet shows, their favorite games and various other means are used to put across Brooke’s message to motivate the children to look after their animals.
