SCHOOLS As of October 2006, there were 19,162 recognized refugees registered with the UNHCR office in Cairo. 13,446 are Sudanese, with a male to female ratio of 64:36 percent. Some 34 percent of the refugee population is made of children under the age of 18. More than 80 percent of Sudanese refugees and asylum seekers in Egypt are Christian southerners. It's very difficult to estimate the thousands of Sudanese are not registered. The majority of refugees in Egypt live in rented apartments dispersed throughout the poor quarters of Cairo where they join the urban poor in competing for limited resources and jobs. However, refugees are unable to access subsistence, work, state education, and national health care on the same basis as nationals. Attending school brings stability and security back to the lives of refugee children as education is crucial for their psychological, spiritual, and social development. Thus, Sacred Heart Church sees the lack of educational opportunities for refugee children in Cairo as one of the community's most pressing needs, as these formative years are often wasted with no structured learning. This will hinder the developmental prospects of their countries of origin when they return, or place the children at further disadvantage if resettled to a third country. Furthermore, in a large urban metropolis, going to school helps protect refugee children from the dangers of being on the streets in a city, where they maybe prone to child labor, drugs, racial discrimination, and physical and sexual abuse. In order to meet the continuing influx and needs of the refugee community, Sacred Heart Church has established five educational centres in Cairo over the past few years. The St. Lwanga Center for Basic Education -a school for Sudanese refugee and displaced children has been operating at the Sacred Heart Church since 1990. It serves around 600 children from different ethnic, tribal and religious background and employs 30 Sudanese teachers and a Sudanese doctor. It opens 5 days per week and follows the first 13 grades from Kindergarten to Secondary level of the Egyptian national curriculum, which is taught in Arabic. Its main aim is to contribute to the improvement of the educational levels and to encourage the personal growth and healthy development of the school children. St. Bakhita Center for Basic Education, located in the district of Arbaa wy Nus, serves 500 students and employs 25 refugee teachers. It was opened in 2000. In 2004, the Trinitarian Fathers took over the responsibility of the centre. St. Joseph's Center for Basic Education Center, located in the district of Maadi, serves 250 students and employs 18 refugee teachers. This schools adopts the same educational curriculum as St. Lwanga. Canossian Educational and Social Centre opened in 2004 in the district of Zeiton and provides education to 80 children at the kindergarten and grade 1 levels and employs 6 refugee teachers. School Breakfast Feeding Many refugee children are suffering from chronic hunger and malnutrition. Some of the symptoms observed by school teachers, and health professionals in the clinics, include children falling asleep in class, difficulty in concentrating, difficulty in remembering or learning new information, headaches and stomach aches, and erratic attendance and school drop out. To combat this problem, and to support the millennium goal of providing primary education to all children, within the context of Cairo's considerable population of refugee children, a school breakfast feeding project at all four learning centres was implemented since the scholastic year 2004-2005. Summer School For nine years along with other educational centre for refugees, the Parish organizes and implements an educational and recreational summer school for African refugee and displaced children. Through this initiative the Parish provides a community-based quality project, which helps improve the English language skills of the children and allowed them to explore their African cultural heritage through visual and performing arts If you wish to collaborate with the Sacred Heart Church's Educational Programs, you can donate to our Educational Programs by: 1. Sending a check directly to: Sacred Heart Church 72 Ahmed Said Street Abbyssia - 11381 Cairo-Egypt Please make your check payable to Sacred Heart Church. 2. Make a bank transfer directly to our bank account: Mission De L'Afrique Central Banque du Caire et de Paris 3, Latin America Street, Garden city Cairo, Egypt A/C Number 0045009 Swift Code: BNPAEGCXXXX

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