Advancing Gender Equality and Women Villagers' Civil and Economic Rights           

The project comes in line with Caritas Egypt efforts to support the development of new communities in desert areas in Alexandria. The project will be implemented in 3 rural and desertic villages in Nubareya zone, 80 Km. west of Alexandria. The proposed CFLI project “Advancing Gender Equality and Women’s Villagers’ Civil and Economic Rights” is part of a larger Caritas initiative to support the development of the local communities in Western Nubariya zone initially supported by Caritas Switzerland since 2003. The larger initiative was implemented over 2 phases; phase (1) 2003-2007 & phase (2) 2007-2010. The overall objective of the Caritas larger initiative is to develop settlements in desert areas for prosperity and better quality of life for local communities. The initiative adopts a multi-stakeholder approach and is participatory in nature aiming at community development at the grassroots level. Accordingly, since women constitute a large part of the community and households, the proposed Canada Fund project aims to advance gender equality and women villagers’ civil and economic rights through the socio-economic empowerment of civil society organizations in the target area. The CFLI project’s specific objectives are: (a) To establish partnerships and networking activities between 3 CDAs in 3 villages in Nubareya zone who have woman club in their structure; (b) To establish one "Women Advocacy Group" (WAG) in each selected village; (c) To implement an extended capacity building training program on gender equality and women's civil, political and economic rights for the established WAGs; (d) To support the implementation by the WAGs of an extensive advocacy campaign on gender equality and women's civil, political and economic rights, guided by the partner CDAs and the umbrella NGO "Caritas".