Egypt

Empowering Women to Claim their Inheritance Rights: Post-Project Impact Analysis

Between January 2013 to June 2016, CARE International Egypt implemented a project addressing “Empowering women to claim Inheritance Rights (WIN)”. This project was funded by the European Commission under the Gender Equality Programme and aimed to strengthen the access of women particularly those in Upper Egypt to gain access and control over their economic rights, resources and opportunities through their lawful inheritance.

The objectives of this impact evaluation was to:
1. Quantify the Impact achieved as the result of the Amended Inheritance Law in terms of people whose rights to a life free from (economic) violence is being fulfilled to a greater degree than before the amended Inheritance law.
2. Assess and analyse if/how the introduction of criminalization and penalties in the Inheritance Law have enhanced the application of the amended Inheritance Law to date and provide recommendations on how its application can be further improved/strengthened.
3. Identify and analyse non intended effects both positive or negative, of the Amended Inheritance Law with regards to women property rights through inheritance.

Extrapolating the model to the published data on vital statistics, agricultural statistics and income expenditure published by the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics of 2016 through 2019 reveals that the application of the new amendment of the law potentially results in nearly 34,000 more women who can have access to their inheritance annually.

Based on feedback from women’s’ activists interviewed, the effect of COVID-19 and the closure of courts on the number of women affected was believed to be negligible. Many of these cases are extremely complex and usually take many years in courts and hence would not be significantly affected by this delay.

As inferred from the feedback of key informants, it is too early to to identify positive impacts of the law amendment, however, they highlighted some threats that might hinder the achievement of the desired impact of the law amendment.
- The long duration of the legal dispute and associated legal costs
- Procedural pitfalls
- Socio cultural barriers Read More...

Sustainable Transformation of Egypt’s Aquaculture market System (STREAMS)

The Sustainable Transformation of Egypt’s Aquaculture Market System (STREAMS) project was designed with the overall goal to increase production of inexpensive, nutritious and safe fish from sustainable aquaculture systems to help improve the health and nutrition of Egypt’s resource-poor while creating employment and increasing incomes along the aquaculture value chain. The project was funded by SDC, under domain 2 “Economic Growth” and managed and implemented by WorldFish in partnership with CARE as a sub-contractor and in cooperation with the Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation in five governorates namely: Kafr-El-Sheikh, Fayoum, Behera, Sharkia and Menia. STREAMS was implemented over a period of almost 41 months from December 1, 2015 to April 15, 2019

The end project evaluation identifies and assesses results achieved by WorldFish and partners during the project life at outcome and output levels and draws lessons learned and recommendations for WorldFish, the Donor, project stakeholders and partners. The evaluation was based on both secondary data and use of quantitative and qualitative tools to solicit primary data. Read More...

COVID 19 Rapid Gender Analysis Middle East and North Africa Region

The novel coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has been wreaking havoc on the international community in recent weeks and months, leaving almost no corner untouched. As of 8th April 2020, 1,464,852 cases and 85,397 deaths have been recorded in 212 countries1, including all countries in the Middle East/North Africa (MENA) region with the exception of Yemen. MENA is at a critical stage in containing the pandemic. Some countries have been successful in curtailing the spread by utilizing stringent lockdown measures, while other more fragile and conflict-affected countries, that are less equipped for additional crises, are only beginning to face the inevitable spread of the virus, with incredibly diminished health infrastructures. Widespread conflict, displacement, and migration in the region significantly complicates a controlled response to COVID-19, and extreme water scarcity makes
preventative measures even more challenging.
Women and girls in MENA faced numerous barriers to education, mobility, financial and asset control, and public leadership prior to the pandemic, and any positive gains made recently are at risk. They are impacted by losses in the informal labor market, elevated levels of violence and harassment, and increased burdens of caregiving for out-of-school children, sick and elderly family members.
Levels of psychosocial distress, already high in a volatile region are only escalating, with reductions in men’s roles as providers
being felt in a context of strict gender roles and stigmatization. The potential shift in men’s and boys’ role to provide increased
caregiving should be explored in contextually-appropriate manners. Read More...

PROMOTING A SUSTAINABLE AND FOOD SECURE WORLD (PROSPER) – FINAL EVALUATION – REPORT

CARE and Cargill have built on their fifty years partnership in implementing PROSPER Project: Promoting a Sustainable and Food Secure World in seven countries. Two phases of the project have already been implemented during globally and in Egypt. In Egypt, the Phase II work called the Origination and Development of Soya Bean Smallholder Farmers project. The project addressed the food and livelihood security of farming families in the three governorates of Minia, Behera and Beni Suef, and ended in July, 2017.

CARE and Cargill has launched a third phase of the project in 2018. The goal for Phase III is to create a more inclusive socio-economic environment along the soybean value chain for small-scale farmers in Egypt. The project targeted 3000 farmers.

The evaluation focused on providing an overview of the project’s relevance, efficiency, effectiveness, impact and sustainability. The evaluation assessed assess the status of achievement of project indicators, identified implementation challenges, derived lessons learned and recommendations for future phases of the project.

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The end-line report of “Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices (KAP) Study of Women’s and Men’s Different Roles for “WE SHARE THE LOAD” Project

CARE Egypt in partnership with Ariel has implemented a project called “We Share the Load” to address women‟s economic and social empowerment and provide them with an opportunity to improve their livelihoods. The objective of the project is to enable “Women in the targeted communities to be able to economically and socially participate in lifting their families out of poverty in a society that is built on gender justice.” The project targets 1000 women/female headed household and 200 men, in two main locations within Assuit governorate: Tatalia village and Arab Tatalia.

Evaluation shows that there are a number of females who works just and that the ratio of female to family members‟ labor force participation rate in the targeted communities reached 16.8%, which indicate that women in targeted communities are economically able to participate in lifting their families out of poverty. However, since the baseline study did not measure all the project‟s indicators, the evaluation team could not assess if the goal objective is achieved or not.

On the other hand, the study tried to identify respondents‟ satisfaction with their current financial situation as compared to the year before the project to define the project‟s role in improving their financial situation. Results indicate that only 30% of respondents are satisfied with their financial situation, and 68.3% stated some improvement in their financial situation compared to previous year. This is consistent with the results of the qualitative study where respondents stated that the increase in their incomes was less than rise in prices. Read More...

Supporting civil society in socio- economic development at local level

In early 2018, the EU Delegation in Egypt launched the mid-term evaluation of Component 3 of the Support for Partnership, Reforms and Inclusive Growth (SPRING) Programme in Egypt. The Programme encompasses two main components, namely socio-economic development and support to civil society.
The overall objective of the programme is to “improve the socio-economic conditions and rights of the poorest and those most in need of the population“. Read More...

Women’s Economic Empowerment through Gender Transformative Approaches – Evidence from CARE’s Experience in Middle East & North Africa

CARE defines women’s economic empowerment (WEE) as the process by which women increase their right to economic resources and the power to make decisions that benefit themselves, their families and their communities. Our Theory of Change (as discussed in CARE’s WEE Strategy Document) outlines three conditions necessary for genuine and sustainable economic empowerment for women: increased capabilities, decision-making power and an enabling environment. An integrated approach across all three conditions is required to achieve genuine and sustainable change. Increasing individual women’s capabilities can lead to temporary increases in their economic opportunities and income. However, women’s economic empowerment can only be achieved through also transforming unequal power relations and discriminatory structures.

This Learning Brief is created to provide practical learning and present existing tools applied by CARE Country Offices (COs) in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region to encourage a more gender transformative approach to WEE and livelihood programming. This is highly relevant for practicioners from the whole sector working on economic empowerment and livelihood porgramming in fragile settings anywhere in the world. This document can aid a better understanding of gender transformative concepts by livelihood staff, as well as better understanding of the principles of sound economic empowerment by gender staff. This Learning Brief contains many practical insights and allows practicioners to understand how theory and frameworks can have an impact on the actual programming and results on the ground. The Hub encourages teams and practicioners to use this Brief, and the different overviews and examples provided, to reflect on their own work on gender integration, and take steps to move beyond gender responsive programming towards a truly transformative approach for our impact groups.

Learning insights incorporated in the document are based on the learning accumulated by CARE MENA Country Offices (COs) in the last five years under our women’s economic empowerment/livelihood programming. It focuses on two main components of WEE gender transformative programming: economic advancement and gender equality, along with approaches related to engaging men and boys. The evidence of these lessons learned is based on: 1) revision of documentation of more than 12 long term and short term WEE/livelihood programs implemented by CARE in Jordan, Syria, Egypt, West Bank & Gaza, Caucasus and the Balkans, 2) interviews with key informants including gender champions from these COs along with other global CARE gender experts who collectively searched for answers to questions in the themes of gender transformative approaches in WEE programming. Read More...

Gender Sensitive Citizen Charter Project: Baseline Study and Gender Gap Analysis

The Citizen Charter approach adopted by the project “Gender Sensitive Citizen Charters” follows the approach that citizens and civil society also have important roles to play in improving and delivering public services and achieving social outcomes... Too often citizens do not know what their basic entitlements and responsibilities are, or what performance they can expect of service providers. This lack of information prevents people accessing services, allows for underperformance of services and makes it easier for local officials and service providers to divert public resources for illicit gain. Many countries have established Service Charters, backed by information campaigns which make clear what services and benefits people are entitled to receive, the performance standards they should expect, and the grievance redress channels they can use when things go wrong. The project “Gender Sensitive Citizen Charters” adopts a gender approach for the citizen’s charter in order to respond to many challenges faced at the community levels in Egypt. One of these main challenges is the poverty level. The Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS) reports that Egypt’s poverty line has soared to a whopping 27.8 percent in 2015, compared to 25.2 percent back in 2011.Poverty is usually linked to distribution of resources but also to “who” can access them and “how”. Therefore, implementing a gender approach is essential as it helps in analyzing the power structures and the proper interventions to change them. This study aims at introducing a baseline study and a gender gap analysis. It depended on qualitative data collection through focus group discussions (FGDs) with women and men in both governorates where the project is implemented: Beni-Suef and Qena. It also collected data through key informant interviews with head of NGOs or CDAs in the villages and districts where the FGDs were conducted. [48 pages] Read More...

Mainstreaming of Social Accountability in The Emergency Labor Intensive Investment Project: Evaluation Study

Social accountability is one of the forms of accountability resulting from the activities of citizens and civil society organizations (CSOs) to hold government agencies accountable. The World Bank was the first to use the term “social accountability” (SA) to describe a set of procedures and mechanisms that enable citizens, civil society, and mass media to hold the government and public sector officials accountable. The term also represents the procedures adopted by the government, CSOs, mass media, and other social stakeholders to promote or facilitate such efforts. Therefore, SA is a form of social participation that transforms communities from being service receivers to a key partner throughout all stages, including needs assessment, pre-planning of activities, monitoring of service delivery, up to evaluation and improvement.

Social accountability aims at enabling stakeholders to access the best services. As such, it relies on mechanisms for giving voice and participation. Over the past decade there were many examples that revealed that citizens could express their viewpoints and actively participate in urging the public sector to be more responsive and accountable.
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Soybeans for Smallholder Farmers Cultivation Practices Cargill PROSPER

Despite initiatives undertaken by some national and international organizations towards creating an enabling environment for soybean smallholders, most of such initiatives have been deficient in evaluating proper and improper current farming practices, which could have contributed to further reforming of this cultivation. Therefore, CARE International adopted the idea of preparing a study to measure and evaluate practices of soybean cultivation in the governorates of Minya, Beni Suef and Dakahliya. By using criteria and indicators of the reality and specificity of the soybean sector in Egypt, helping monitor and measure the form and degree of practices in order to identify problems, in such practices, suffered by smallholders and to find solutions that best suit them. [53 pages] Read More...

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