ELCA Staff Visit Cairo Program that Helps Provide Nutritious Meals

CAIRO (ELCA) -- Off a bustling main street, a pedestrian
bridge over train tracks leads into the El-Sharabya district
here. There's a street vendor selling grapes on the corner and a
mangy-looking donkey tied outside an apartment building. Despite
the 500,000 people who live in this two-square-mile area, the
streets are quiet.
The Rev. Said Ailabouni, director, Europe and Middle East
Program, and Lita Brusick Johnson, associate executive director
and director for international programs, Evangelical Lutheran
Church in America (ELCA) Global Mission, visited the neighborhood
Oct. 19. They met those helped by the Coptic Evangelical
Organization for Social Services (CEOSS) program to improve
children's health. CEOSS is an ecumenical companion of the ELCA.
Both are on a trip that will take them to visit ELCA mission
partners in Egypt and parts of Lebanon that were involved in
armed conflict between Israel and Hezbollah this past summer.
Through the nutrition program, children who are malnourished
receive one healthy meal a week, and their mothers receive
training in how to select, wash and prepare healthy food.
The program helps those such as Noha, who lives in Ezbet El-
Ward -- known to locals as a squatter's village -- and who has
two children, a 5-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son. "Weekly
we meet with a doctor who talks with us and raises our
awareness," said Noha.
Rahma has also benefited from the program. Her mother,
Nagey Yousef, makes sure she drinks a glass of milk each day.
Since Yousef learned about the benefits of calcium through the
nutrition program she includes eggs, cheese and yogurt in Rahma's
diet.
On the other side of the city, Dr. Nasri Henin Mitri has a
waiting room filled with 150 young patients and their mothers. A
sewage canal runs through the neighborhood, and there are piles
of burning garbage in empty lots. Many of the children have
respiratory diseases and parasites as a result of their living
conditions.
Through the program Sara Nagh said her children have
received monthly medical examinations, weekly nutritious meals,
vitamins and medication for parasitic diseases. "They taught us
how to prepare good nutritional meals and even how to present the
food in a good way to attract the children to eat it," she said.
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Information about ELCA Global Mission is at
http://www.ELCA.org/globalmission/ on the ELCA Web site.

*Amber Leberman is with The Lutheran, the magazine of the ELCA.

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John Brooks, Director (773) 380-2958 or news@elca.org
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