6 June 2007

Dear Family and Friends,

Tomorrow is a big day for Together for Family Development network. We will hold our event targeting members of Egyptian lower house of parliament People's Assembly, Shura Council (Egypt’s Upper House), the Undersecretaries of the Ministry of Education, and members of the National Council of Childhood and Motherhood.

TFD network representatives who attended the advocacy event in June, including parliamentarian Mr. Abdel Rahman Kheir, vice president of the Human Resources Committee of the Egyptian Shura Council.

At this point, the event is loosely related to the International “Education for All” Campaign, which targets education for all children worldwide by 2015. Our main messages are “children with disabilities have the right to education” and “inclusive education is possible—pilot projects have been successfully implemented.”  Dr. Alaa Sebeh (disability advisor for Save the Children U.K. in North Africa and the Middle East) will speak on rights and reality of Egyptian children with disability; Dr Naguib Khouzam (director of SETI Center, which trains adults who interact with disabled children) will speak about SETI Center's experience with inclusion in 15 Egyptian schools in three governorates.

One of our board members, Adel Badri, accepted the responsibility of contacting parliamentarians and media professionals. A lot of people have said yes to our invitation but, we won't know until tomorrow who will actually come.

At the TDF network's advocacy event this June, disabled children posed with "Khokh," an Egyptian Sesame Street character.

We have tried to live up to the standard set by Mrs. Nada Thabet who was responsible for last year’s event on December 7. The seminar will be held at the Cairo Library in Zamalek. The library is housed in what was originally the palace of a princess, so it is a classy building. Our meeting room is smallish but nice. (Use is free!) There is an entrance into the meeting area at the back of the building from a small garden that borders the Nile River. A character from Sesame Street Egypt will be present to greet guests and have its picture taken with the children. We have made T-shirts for the children to wear. We will display art work children drew of schools and school-related issues. We have gathered more stories of exclusion. All of the member organizations have contributed with stories and/or art workshops with the children. A small choir of children with disabilities will sing two songs about their rights. We have had a company put all our relevant documents on CD for media people so they can do an easy cut-and-paste job for articles. We have made simple but effective hard copy information packages for the guests.

The event should be the beginning of identifying half a dozen media professionals who we will court and keep with us going forward. We also hope it will be the beginning of building relationship with the parliamentarians!

The TDF network Web site is almost finished, in Arabic and English.

That's our news.

Blessings,

Nancy

The 2007 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 158