About us

We are a team of women running a series of races to fund a ‘Well Baby Clinic.’ for mothers and babies from the community of garbage collectors ‘The Zabaleen’ in Cairo. Our first race was the Pharaonic Race on November 17th. We are now running our 2nd race on February 23rd to continue to raise funds and awareness for this long term project.

Some of us have been volunteering in the ‘Baby Wash’ project currently running in the community and wanted to help more, motivated by the lack of available health services for mothers and babies.

We intend to run several races over the next year to raise as much as possible to keep the clinic going once it has started. Not all of us are keen runners – most of us have never run 10km before and so it will be a challenge for us but we will be proud to finish and raise as much as possible for this community!

The ‘Zabaleen’

Zabaleen meaning 'garbage people' in Egyptian Arabic

This garbage village is one of the largest garbage collector settlements in Cairo, Egypt. It’s a highly urbanized area, with around 350,000 people living and working there. Every day, the men and boys collect more than a third of the 10,000 tons of daily garbage produced in Cairo. They leave home before dawn, starting their collection routes. The collected waste is brought to their homes, where the women and girls do the sorting into different types of recyclable materials (plastic, glass, metal, etc.). After being sorted it is sold on to other families or companies for recycling. This system makes the living conditions in the garbage villages very unhygienic and hazardous, resulting in high rates of disease and infant mortality (close to twice as high as the rest of Egypt). An extremely high percentage of the children suffer from respiratory illnesses, diarrhoea, and infectious diseases. Almost 50% of the inhabitants have intestinal parasites. The community also suffer from malnutrition due to inadequate dietary intake and disease. These problems are compounded at the household level by: insufficient access to food; inadequate education and childcare; poor water/sanitation and inadequate health services.

Zabaleen History

Zabaleen article - Guardian

youtube documentary

The Project

The main objective of the project is to improve the health of babies and mothers in Garbage City. The Clinic will run health checks and health sessions for 3 days per week and hopes to serve 1000 mothers and babies per year.

The Well Baby Clinic will serve the families who have completed the Baby Wash sessions and aims to raise awareness and provide health support for mothers and children in this community up to the age of 2 years. The program includes homes visits as well as the clinic sessions.

This is a unique opportunity to build on the relationships established with these mothers and help them to raise healthier babies. Motherhood is often a positive and fulfilling experience, but for too many women it is also associated with suffering, ill-health and even death. Better health education allows women to obtain knowledge and the necessary skills to care for their babies and for themselves.

Goals of the project

¥ Improve the health of children in their first 2 years of life.

¥ To educate mothers and families on a wide range of health topics.

¥ Create a safe place where mothers come and get support and share ideas with other mothers

¥ Gain greater trust within the community and communicate the importance of hygiene and good health.

¥ To enable detection of growth disorders, abnormalities and risk factors and to refer to specialized health services.

¥ Improve nutrition for babies and mothers.

¥ Family planning – increase use of contraceptives, awareness of spacing between births and number of children.

The costs and what your donations can buy

£5000 will cover the initial costs of training the 12 Health Care Workers needed to run the program. This includes the cost of the course curriculum itself and all resources required to set up an office and run the training. This amount will also pay for the equipment needed to prepare the clinic.

The purchase of the training program is paramount to the success of the project and the long term benefits of having trained health care workers in the community far outweigh this initial investment in training. The health care workers are chosen from the community they serve.

After the set-up costs have been met the program will run for 3 years and your donations will contribute as follows:

50p will provide a healthy snack for the mother each time she attends.

£1 will provide supplies of baby products with each visit.

£62.50 will pay the monthly salary of one nurse or one health visitor

£75 will pay for fees for the visiting speakers for one month.

£150 will pay the Paediatrician’s salary for one month.