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2006

Providing new opportunities to adolescent girls in socially Providing new opportunities to adolescent girls in socially

conservative settings: The Ishraq program in rural Upper Egypt conservative settings: The Ishraq program in rural Upper Egypt

Martha Brady Population Council

Ragui Assaad Population Council

Barbara L. Ibrahim

Abeer Salem Population Council

Rania Salem

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Recommended Citation Recommended Citation Brady, Martha, Ragui Assaad, Barbara L. Ibrahim, Abeer Salem, Rania Salem, and Nadia Zibani. 2006. "Providing new opportunities to adolescent girls in socially conservative settings: The Ishraq program in rural Upper Egypt." New York: Population Council.

This Report is brought to you for free and open access by the Population Council.

Authors Authors Martha Brady, Ragui Assaad, Barbara L. Ibrahim, Abeer Salem, Rania Salem, and Nadia Zibani

This report is available at Knowledge Commons: https://knowledgecommons.popcouncil.org/departments_sbsr-pgy/57

Providing new opportunities to adolescent girls in

socially conservative settings:The Ishraq programin rural Upper Egypt

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The Ishraq (“enlightenment”) program in rural Egypt has ambitious goals for adolescentgirls: to create safe spaces for girls to learn and play in theircommunities, to increase their literacy, and to promote positivesocial norms related to their abilities and life opportunities.

In a rapidly globalizing and technologicallydriven world, children who miss out on basic schooling or whose childhood is interrupted by marriage will be leftbehind. In rural areas of Upper Egypt, thatdisadvantaged group is largely made up ofadolescent girls. Much has changed in Egypt over

the last 20 years, reflected in expanded investments in

education and rising levels of literacy, improvements in

the infrastructure of rural communities, vigorous growth

in the economy, and expanding civic participation. Girls

in rural Upper Egypt, however, remain socially isolated

within their families, without a voice in their communi-

ties, burdened with heavy domestic chores, and subject to

harmful traditional practices like child marriage and

female genital cutting.

Although all of Egypt’s 13 million boys and girls ages

10 to 19 face challenges in safely reaching adulthood,

rural adolescent girls of Upper Egypt are among the most

disadvantaged youth. It is for these girls that the

Ishraq program was begun in 2001. What follows is

the story of the first phase of the program and the

remarkable changes it has fostered in a short time.

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Puberty, rather than opening doors to newopportunities, consolidates girls’ disadvan-tage. Apart from their lesser access toschooling, Upper Egyptian girls are at riskfor early marriage, female genital cutting,and violence within the household. Ruralgirls work long hours in the home and inthe fields. Fears for their social reputationrestrict mobility and community participa-tion. Girls have little access to or time for“recreation”: only 5 percent of rural girlsreported having played sports in the previ-ous day compared to 56 percent of boys.Added to this is a climate in which civicengagement is not encouraged for youngpeople, and fewer than 5 percent join clubsor other organizations.

Boys’ and girls’ prospects divergesharply at puberty. Boys can seek out alter-native avenues for expression, socializing,and learning public roles—at sports clubsand on street corners. Girls’ main outlet forinteraction outside the family is the school.Thus withdrawal from schooling meansmore than forfeiting a formal education andskills. Out-of-school girls miss out on thepleasure and practical support of interactionwith peers, exposure to positive adult rolemodels (inspiring teachers or women theywould “like to be like”), and access to aplace outside the home where their pres-ence is safe and welcome and they canbegin to be part of community life.

The degree of success with which ruralgirls make the transition to adulthood withgreater resources and freedom than theirmothers will largely determine whether ornot Egypt reaches its national Millennium

Development Goals related to poverty alle-viation, a more equitable distribution ofincome across households, improved edu-cational attainment, reductions in mater-nal and child mortality, and promotion ofbetter reproductive health. For that to hap-pen, these forgotten girls need to haveadvocates and lifelines. Cycles of illiteracy,poor job prospects, and social isolation canbe broken, but doing so requires concertedefforts to reach girls early—with robustprograms—before marriage and childbear-ing consolidate their isolation and poverty.

>>Taking Action to Reach GirlsLeft Behind This picture of exclusion and vulnerabilitywas the catalyst for a pilot program locallyknown as Ishraq, undertaken in four ruralvillages of the Al Minya governorate inUpper Egypt. In 2001 four nongovernmen-tal organizations (NGOs) with a long tradi-tion of working in Egypt—Caritas, CEDPA(the Center for Development andPopulation Activities), the PopulationCouncil, and Save the Children, with criti-cal support from two key governmentagencies, the Ministry of Youth (recentlyrenamed the Supreme Council for Youth)and the National Council for Childhood andMotherhood (NCCM)—launched a jointeffort. The four NGO partners became the“Ishraq resource team” responsible forintroducing the Ishraq program and evalu-ating its success. They remain a criticalresource for transferring the knowledgeand experience gained through Ishraq toother institutions inside and outside of

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The years of transition from childhood toadulthood ideally bring expanding opportu-nities, growing self-awareness, and increasedknowledge about the world. For girls in ruralEgypt, these prospects often never arrive.

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Ishraq’s primary objectives are to:

Create safe public spaces for girls intheir communities and lay thefoundation for citizenship

Improve girls’ functional literacy,recreational opportunities, life skills, health knowledge and attitudes, mobility, basic livelihoods information,and civic engagement

Positively influence social normsconcerning girls’ abilities andlife opportunities

Improve local and national decisionmakers’ support forgirl-friendly measures and policies

Ishraq aims to improve the lives of rural out-of-school girls by providing them with safe meetingplaces and a second chance for education. Ninety-two percent ofIshraq participants who took thegovernment literacy exam passed.

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Egypt that seek to provide new opportuni-ties to girls in socially conservative settings.

Ishraq had ambitious goals. It sought totransform girls’ lives by changing gendernorms and community perceptions aboutgirls’ roles, build their skills, and bring themsafely and confidently into the public sphere.The program aimed to establish protectedand comfortable “girl-friendly” spaces in thecommunities where girls could meet, learn,play, develop, and practice leadership.

Ishraq offered not a one-off course, buta series of interlocking opportunities—lit-eracy classes, life skills training, communi-ty engagement, and sports. Girls ages 13 to15 from four villages met four times a weekfor three-hour sessions in youth centers orschools in groups of about 25 memberseach. In each village about 50 girls partici-pated and within the first year, as commu-nity enthusiasm grew, there were waitinglists of interested girls. Given the smallpopulations in these villages, this numberrepresents a noteworthy proportion of eli-gible girls. The 30-month program offeredgirls sufficient exposure to enable them topass their literacy exam and enter or returnto school; the length of the program alsohad the benefit of getting communities andfamilies accustomed to girls’ new roles andtheir freer movement outside the home.

>>Agents of Change: Ishraq Promoters as Role Models, Mentors, and TeachersMindful that adolescent girls cannot makechanges on their own, the resource teamrecruited young female secondary-schoolgraduates from the community and trainedthem as program leaders, known as pro-moters. Promoters served as teachers, rolemodels, girls’ advocates, and providers ofmoral support. They became the criticallink between girls, their families, and theIshraq resource team—providing interpre-

tation in both directions, quelling the fearsof hesitant parents on the one hand, andarticulating and addressing girls’ culturalconcerns on the other.

In order to reach the most vulnerablegirls, Ishraq based the timing of meetingsboth on the girls’ schedules, which are oftenfilled with work and domestic chores, and onavailability of space in the village. Notably,the community and youth centers mostcommonly used were never officially off-limits to girls but until the initiation of theIshraq program, girls and women wererarely seen in these nominally public spaces.

Ishraq aimed to develop a range of skillswhile increasing girls’ self-confidence, build-ing their leadership abilities, and raisingtheir aspirations. Cognitive developmentwas promoted through training in language,numeracy, and problem solving. Confidentphysical expression was encouragedthrough games, movement, and sports.Girls’ social capital and negotiation skillswere augmented through a life skills com-ponent that sought to build their capacityfor interpersonal relations, offered visits toother villages, provided accurate healthinformation, and introduced them to therights and materials (birth certificates andidentification cards) of citizenship.

Recognizing that interventions aimedsolely at girls would have only a minimaleffect on the norms that govern genderbehavior and restrict options for girls, theIshraq team prioritized community engage-ment from the outset. The team workedsimultaneously with adolescent boys, par-ents, and community leaders such as priestsand mosque imams, physicians, mayors, andgovernorate health and education officials. Toaddress boys’ domination of girls in the homeand their harassment of girls in public, Ishraqintroduced CEDPA’s New Visions curriculumtargeted to adolescent boys. This community-engagement approach was difficult to carry

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Organized sports and play were groundbreaking. Ishraq’ssports component was designedto build girls’ confidence and sense of ownership of their bodies while encouraging freedom of movement and physical expression.

out and took time to develop—at least sixmonths at the start—but resulted in a com-monly agreed framework of values and goals.

>>Ishraq Program: Literacy, Life Skills, Sports, LivelihoodsIshraq adopted Caritas’s Learn to Be Free lit-eracy curriculum, one of the most success-ful programs of its kind in Egypt. Learn to Be

Free relies on active discussion betweenteachers and girls as the primary means ofimparting information and knowledge.Promoters were readily trained to intro-duce topics using audio-visual aidsdesigned to stimulate learning; each stu-dent was required to contribute a numberof times in each session and was encour-aged to express her own opinions andrespect the views of others. Learn to Be Free

classes were held twice a week, offeringinstruction in Arabic, math, health, envi-ronment, and income-generating skills. Abasic goal of the classes was to foster girls’entry or reentry into the formal education-al system.

CEDPA’s New Horizons life skills pro-gram was included because it had beenclosely adapted to the condition of girls inUpper Egypt. The courses sought tostrengthen girls’ ability to attain their sex-ual and reproductive rights—increasing theprobability that they would make later,safer marriages of their choice—and toeliminate harmful traditional practices.Girls discussed the information providedand proposed ways to challenge the tacticsthat family members commonly use tocontrol wives and daughters through beat-ings and abusive language, female genitalcutting, and pressure for early marriage.

Whereas the literacy and life skills pro-grams were tailored from existing resources,Ishraq’s sports component was a novel andgroundbreaking activity within these vil-lages, and as such had no blueprint to fol-

low. Introducing sports programs for adoles-cent girls in culturally conservative settingshas long been a challenge. Ishraq beganwith indigenous games that are sedentaryand played indoors. As the program pro-gressed, activities such as jumping jacks,running, and kicking soccer balls helpedgirls feel more comfortable with their bod-ies—of particular importance during puber-ty when many girls, having been subjectedto physical confinement and female genitalcutting, may not feel comfortable enjoyingtheir bodies and finding expression throughthem. Parents, male siblings, and communi-ty representatives were consulted at allstages to ensure that girls’ right to play wasprotected and had their families’ support. Itwas crucial that girls’ uniforms were modestand that basic sports skills were taught in anenclosed space, at the youth center awayfrom prying eyes.

Table tennis proved to be well-suited togirls’ social requirements, as it allows fordiscreet dress and is relatively inexpensiveto organize and culturally familiar. In col-laboration with the International TableTennis Federation and its local Egyptianaffiliate, table tennis became a key elementof the Ishraq sports program, popularamong both girls and their parents; in somecircumstances boys and girls participatedtogether in free play and tournaments.Whereas soccer as a team sport did not findfavor, the girls continued to enjoy kickingthe ball to one another and relished thevigorous exercise.

In addition to sports and classroomlearning, girls from poor families expressedan interest in learning both home-basedand vocational skills that would assist themin their future roles as mothers andproviders of household income. Girls wereeager to learn cheese and jam making,sewing, and needle work, and promoterstaught them these skills. Some participants

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wanted to learn nontraditional and com-mercial skills: apprenticeships were estab-lished for girls who wished to learn aboutelectrical appliance repair and hairdressing.

>>Key Achievements: Changesfor Girls and Their Communities In its first 30 months of operation, Ishraqnot only changed the lives of girls but,owing to the comprehensiveness of theintervention and the relatively high pro-portions of eligible girls in each communi-ty participating, it altered how girls are“seen” by communities and policymakersin Upper Egypt.

Ishraq was rigorously evaluated bymeans of a longitudinal survey, using a pre-test/post-test design, of all out-of-schooladolescent girls ages 13 to 15 in the fourIshraq villages and in an additional two con-trol villages. The survey measured knowl-edge of vital health and human rights issues,gender role attitudes, literacy and educa-tional aspirations, friends and peer net-works, work and livelihood skills, restric-tions on mobility, sports participation, andkey issues related to marriage. By compar-ing responses before and after the introduc-tion of Ishraq (and comparing these resultswith changes over time in the control com-munities), it is possible to discern the degreeof change attributable to participation inIshraq. Here is some of the evidence.

Evidence of change in girls’ lives andtheir communities• Initially the “safe spaces” concept was

based on the observation that girls lackeda dedicated place where they could meetwith friends and engage in independentactivities without interference from familyor male peers. In the course of the Ishraqprogram, community members becameaccustomed to seeing girls travel fromtheir homes to the community center and

recognized and accepted their right to ded-icated girls-only spaces in the community.

• The purpose of Ishraq was not simply toprovide girls with basic literacy skills, butto facilitate their return to formal educa-tion through the public school system.

• Ninety-two percent of Ishraq participantswho later took the government literacyexam passed, and 67 percent of girls whocompleted the program have enteredschool. In the second round of Ishraq, theentry age will be lowered to 11 years,increasing the possibility that a higherproportion of girls who pass the exam areyoung enough to enter secondary school.

• Approximately one-half of Ishraq partici-pants have joined a local club or associa-tion since participating in the program.

• Ishraq has trained skilled young promot-ers who have become active citizens. Bythe end of the pilot program, some pro-moters had organized women’s associa-tions in their communities, joined politi-cal groups, and accepted local leadershippositions.

• Group discussions with parents of Ishraqgirls suggest that they have adoptedincreasingly progressive views towardgirls’ roles, rights, and capabilities.

• The Ishraq program worked with localauthorities to ensure that girls wereoffered identification cards in the form ofa health or birth certificate—a critical firststep in developing an active citizenry aswell as offering some protection fromunderage marriage, which is often justi-fied on the basis that a girl’s age is notactually known.

• Girls are more certain of their rights andmore confident in their ability to assertand defend them. Upon completion ofthe program, girls reported higher levelsof self-confidence: 65 percent said theyoften felt “strong and able to face any

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Ishraq recruits young female secondary-school graduates fromthe community and trains themto be program leaders, known aspromoters. Promoters serve as teachers, role models, girls’ advocates, and providers of moralsupport. They become the criticallink between girls, their families,and the Ishraq resource team.

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problem.” Participation in Ishraq has ledto a reduction in the number of girls whoreport they feel they have to obey theirbrothers. Participants also expressed adesire to marry at older ages and have asay in choosing their husbands.

• Ishraq has greatly reduced girls’ supportfor female genital cutting. All girls whocompleted the full 30 months of partici-pation said they would not have theirdaughters undergo genital cutting.(Because the decision to perform theprocedure also involves the paternalgrandmother and other members of thefamily, this change in attitude does notguarantee the elimination of the practiceamong the daughters of Ishraq gradu-ates, but it is clearly an important step inthat direction.)

• There was a dramatic increase in girls’interest in sports; while less than 2 per-cent of girls had ever participated insports prior to Ishraq, at the end of theprogram 94 percent said they enjoyedplaying sports and 99 percent wouldencourage their daughters to play. Girlsreported benefiting from playing sports:90 percent claimed improved physicalhealth, and 59 percent claimed improvedmental health.

• Participation in Ishraq helped girls keepand gain friends. This achievement iscrucial, as part of girls’ poverty is thedecline in friendship networks thatbegins around puberty and is furtherreduced after marriage. Ishraq helpedgirls expand their social circles by provid-ing them with opportunities to form andsustain friendships.

>>Consolidating ChangeIshraq is poised to move from the innova-tive pilot phase described here to a largerprogram with the potential to change the

lives of thousands of girls throughoutUpper Egypt. That expansion, however, isunlikely to follow the typical path of scal-ing up. The target group of poor,unschooled adolescent girls can neitherdrive demand nor shape program delivery.This group has for some time been entitledto a number of constitutionally guaranteedrights, such as the right to schooling, tohealth insurance and health care, to a vol-untary marriage at legal age, and to partic-ipation in the life of the community as fullcitizens with personal documentation. Butadolescent girls have not been able to reli-ably access these rights up to now andinstead have had to negotiate through thebarriers of parents, cultural and maritalcustoms, often unsupportive brothers andmale peers, and an insensitive and inacces-sible community structure.

Ishraq has demonstrated the feasibili-ty—indeed in some cases the strongdesire—for change in traditional commu-nities with respect to girls’ rights and thecreation of new opportunities. Thus, a keyobjective of the Ishraq expansion is to rein-force reliable access by girls to their legallyestablished rights by increasing the visibili-ty of adolescent girls and respect for theircapacities—first and foremost within theirfamilies, next within their communitiesand rural governorates, and finally at thelevel of national policymaking. The coreresource team, with the support of theMinistries of Youth, Health, and Education,and the NCCM, will work together as allies,approaching clusters of communities andnew governorates to generate interest increating Ishraq-like programs.

The articulation of Egypt’s nationalMillennium Development Goals is helpfulto this process. It is vital that Ishraq is per-ceived as being aligned with national socialand economic initiatives, such as the Girls’Education Initiative of the NCCM, which

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Girls’ Assessment: In Their Own Words“Ishraq fulfilled our dreams to be educated,

to be respected by our families and our communities!”

“I would have been married without [Ishraq]. We all would have. There are still parents who want to get us married.”

“For the first time in my life I learned that girls have equal rights to education as boys. In the past my understanding was that girlsdid not need to be educated because theywere going to marry.”

“Now I am more active. I feel stronger. Sports aregood. They make girls more aware of what’shappening around them.”

“I took every class seriously. Every class was not just learning letters, it was about the issues we live every day. We learned to cook, welearned to make yogurt, and we learned how to make sweets. Every day, I came home and taught everyone.”

“I was traveling with my father to Assiut. It was myfirst big trip outside of Minya. There was asecurity check and they asked my father whoI was. I pulled out my new identification card.The officer took it, looked at it, and then said,‘You are smart—it is important that you havethis identification card.’ I felt so happy andproud—I felt I was someone, I counted.”

seeks to improve the educational status ofgirls in the most disadvantaged areas ofEgypt. Ishraq’s experience in convertingyouth and community centers to includespace for girls and women is directly sup-portive of the Ministry of Youth as it seeks toimprove girls’ participation in youth centers,expand local capacity for development atthe grass-roots level, and turn the youthcenters into more inclusive communityresources. A formal protocol signed with theMinistry of Youth dedicates specific timesand spaces for Ishraq participants and otheryoung women in village youth centers.

NCCM has also intervened with theMinistry of Interior to facilitate theissuance of national identity cards for girlswhen they reach age 16 and the issuanceof birth certificates for girls who were notregistered at birth. This step has led to awider initiative to issue national identitycards to girls when they reach age 16 andto issue birth certificates for girls who werenever registered at birth.

An essential investment in the pilotphase, and one that needs to be preservedin planning for the second phase, is therecruitment and training of female promot-ers and sports leaders. The recruitment ofyoung women from low-income families inrural Upper Egypt and their training andperformance as teachers, mentors, andearners are strong signals of change. Theyare the most permanent and influentialheirs of the program apart from the gradu-ates themselves. They carried a heavy bur-den of responsibility for protecting girlswhen conflicts arose with families and com-munities. The respect the communitydeveloped for them was often key in ensur-ing the girls could continue to participate.

It is critical that these energies not belost to the community as Ishraq is intro-duced in new villages. These young femaleleaders need to be assured a place in village

life and could profitably be engaged in theexpansion process, conducting training oftrainers and working in nearby villages.Thoughtful and sustained efforts arerequired to retain the talents and experi-ence of these promoters even after theymarry and have children.

One of the most valuable gains fromIshraq is the self-confidence and leadershipskills gained by the graduates themselves.The graduates expressed a strong desire tocontinue to meet with each other, applytheir skills, participate in village life, andretain assured access to youth and commu-nity facilities for group activities. Apart fromthe collective goals of the graduates, eachgirl has her own objectives. An Ishraq grad-uates’ fund has been established that willcombine individual grants (of about US$25)with personal savings to finance continuedschooling, skills building, or livelihoodstraining. Ishraq graduates will be encour-aged to formulate plans for using thesefunds to further their development, thuscontributing to their financial know-how.

>>Benchmarks of Success in the Next Phase Ishraq has already set the stage for changein the original four communities. An addi-tional ten new Ishraq villages have beenorganized. The Ishraq approach has chal-lenged national-level decisionmakers tomove substantially beyond conventionalyouth-serving initiatives, which directtheir efforts to urban, older, and oftenmale beneficiaries. Any on-site observer ofthe program sees the tremendous enthusi-asm of the current group of participatinggirls, and the waiting lists for participationare also a testament to success. Yet, twoquestions always arise when evaluatingprograms for underserved groups: How farcan it go? And, how do you know youhave succeeded?

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Ishraq initiates a process ofchange among girls while also gaining the support of brothers, fathers, mothers, and community leaders.

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While parents were initially hesitant, they became supportiveof the Ishraq program as theirdaughters began to benefit from their new knowledge and skills.

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The Ishraq resource team has estab-

lished measures of success as it seeks to

expand to several clusters of villages in

three of the most traditional Upper

Egyptian governorates. Measures of suc-

cess for the next five years include the goal

of reaching 20 to 30 percent of the eligible

girls and families in each community. For

most villages, this will require two or three

rounds of recruitment of 50 girls at a time;

priority will be given to selecting villages of

intermediate size with between 250 and

650 eligible girls. This includes not only the

poorer villages (size and poverty are often

related), but also the majority of villages in

the three governorates targeted. An effort

will be made in each new village to forge a

more formal “community contract.” This

contract will specify the requirements

incumbent upon a village for its inclusion:

the availability of a facility with dedicated

learning and playing space for Ishraq par-

ticipants; an option to enter school for

those girls who attain their literacy certifi-

cate; and an annual village campaign to

ensure that all children have birth certifi-

cates, access to health insurance, and

national identification cards by the legal

age of 16. A parallel “family contract” is envi-

sioned in which parents will agree to havetheir daughters complete the full programeven if they become engaged. Agreementwill also be sought from both the girls andtheir parents that participants will be pres-ent for at least 80 percent of the scheduledprogram activities. These “contracts” willsignal the seriousness and expectations ofthis initiative and, where resources are lim-ited, help select the most highly motivatedcommunities for investment.

>>Final Thoughts: Ishraq as aVehicle of Change in SociallyConservative SocietiesIn the absence of intervention, poor, rural,unschooled girls in conservative and low-income communities throughout WestAsia and North Africa, and indeed else-where, are destined to a life of poverty,illiteracy, early marriage, high fertility, andpoor health. Ishraq has altered this sce-nario in Upper Egypt by intervening early(around the time of puberty) with a well-designed, multi-dimensional skill-buildingprogram.

There are many potential Ishraq vil-lages around the world. Many other devel-oping countries are also codifying a varietyof rights and funding a host of opportuni-ties theoretically available to girls whomthey cannot yet reach. The challenge forIshraq is to link these girls, their families,and communities to the widening opportu-nities and rights structures of their coun-tries through political participation, strongpartnerships, and effective links amongcivil society, local and national govern-ments, and NGOs.

If the emerging international consen-sus on the Millennium Development Goalsand national constitutions exert pressurefrom the top, the rights and aspirations ofpoor girls supply pressure from the grassroots. In between are private and publicpartnerships such as Ishraq, sustained bycreative and flexible donors and by a timeframe sufficient to allow change to takehold. For Egypt—and many other coun-tries in the process of change—this is a his-toric period of reform and redefinition ofcitizenship, a concerted attempt to elimi-nate poverty. There can be no success inany of these arenas without the inclusionof the girls still left behind.

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As Egypt enters a critical period of reform and redefinition of citizenship, it is vital that adolescent girls are included as a central part of the process.

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Ishraq program collaborators: Caritas, Center for Developmentand Population Activities (CEDPA), Population Council, Save the Children

Governmental partners: Ministry of Youth (Supreme Council forYouth), National Council for Childhood and Motherhood

Donors: Department for International Development (DFID), theDickler Family Foundation, the Ford Foundation/Egypt, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Nike Foundation, United Nations Children’s Fund/Egypt (UNICEF/Egypt)

Written by: Martha Brady, Ragui Assaad, Barbara Ibrahim,Abeer Salem, Rania Salem, and Nadia Zibani

All photographs courtesy of Nadia Zibani

The Population Council, an international, nonprofit, nongovern-mental organization, seeks to improve the well-being and reproductive health of current and future generations aroundthe world and to help achieve a humane, equitable, and sustainable balance between people and resources.

For more information about the Council’s programs, visitwww.popcouncil.org.

©2006 The Population Council, Inc.

Population CouncilOne Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, New York, NY 10017 www.popcouncil.org

www.popcouncil.org/pdfs/IshraqReport.pdfwww.popcouncil.org/pdfs/IshraqFullReport.pdf

Adolescence represents the lastopportunity to prepare girls forthe challenges of adulthood.Failure to reach girls now maywell doom them to lives of isolation, poverty, and powerlessness. It also may betheir last chance for organizedlearning and play. In ruralUpper Egypt, participation inthe Ishraq program providesdisadvantaged girls the opportunity for structuredlearning, mentoring, and participation in community life.