Banati, a Last Chance for Egyptian Street Children

CAIRO – Some of them bear the burden of years of abuse and marginalization, some are impregnated after being raped, and other are just trying to get on with their lives that began on the streets of Egypt.

These are the young girls brought together by the Egyptian organization, Banati (Arabic for “my girls”), which helps to guide street children to lead the lives of which they’ve been robbed.

Banati is not an orphanage, but rather a rehabilitation network that began its work in 2008, and aims to help street children by giving them education, shelter, and teaching them the invaluable tools typically delegated to parents. While it is designed for girls 2 to 15 years old, it also welcomes young boys.

Ultimately, the organization recognizes, the children will return whence they came: the street.

“We are not the action, we are a reaction to a problem that the government must solve, that is the street children,” Banati director Abdel Samea Mounib told Efe in an interview.

The association has several centers throughout Egypt, and the facility in Cairo has common rooms, nurseries and schools. Children run and play in the garden, fully stocked with slides and swings, and are thus shown that their lives can be better than what they have known, that they can just be kids.

Mounib explained that the association welcomes children who are “homeless and at risk, street children who suffer family problems,” attempting to provide them with a social, educational and psychological support, as well as a place to live.

“My mother brought me to the association because she did not want me to be lying in the street. She visits me sometimes. My father lives with her, but he beats me a lot,” 14-year-old Heba Mohamed said, who temporarily resides at the Cairo center.

With what could only be understood as the contentment of a child, Heba talked about how at Banati she spends her time drawing, doing crochet and practicing kung-fu, and also playing with her “sisters” who live with her in the center.

“I want to be professional kung-fu trainer and I am learning to be. I now have a greenbelt,” she stated proudly.

Banati was originally established to help girls who had been raped or assaulted on the streets, but they often came accompanied by their brothers, their children, or in a make-shift street family of many children.

So now the facility is also open to boys.

Two specialists, a man and a woman, knowledgeable about the issue go out almost every day to find children in need of help.

Sometimes they resort directly to street therapy and try to persuade children to return to their homes, but if the attempt fails, they may take them to the association, track down their families, and find a program to rehabilitate them.

The association processes around 25 children a day, and 190 children currently live in the various facilities. Only four months into 2015, it has already helped over 1,550 children and hosted 580 others.

It is difficult to come up with an exact number of children living on the streets of Egypt; the most recent government statistics report the number as exceeding 16,000, but Mounib is convinced that the figure is much higher.

Ahlam Ramzi teaches at a Banati daycare center, caring for children from 4 to 7 years old.

“We just try to give them a chance that their families have been unwilling or unable to give. Many of their mothers are divorced women who cannot take care of their children and who also live on the street,” Ramzi explained.

Meanwhile, Teresa Wafiq works as a teacher in a special, vocational program that teaches children how to cook, clean, fold laundry and educates them on personal hygiene. History and Geography is also taught orally and through pictures.

Teresa tried to convey the difficulty in reaching the children sometimes, remarking that “these are children have many problems such as lack of concentration, sadness, fear and distrust, because of situations that they have seen at home or on the street.”