Entertaining the community...

The Gugu Community Development and Building Association Mission Statement:

The Gugu Community Development and Building Association (GCDBA) is a grassroots community association run by refugees for refugees that seeks to provide and enrich education for refugee children, eradicate childhood illiteracy, and improve adult education, women’s activities and cultural events for refugees.

GCDBA is located within Hadayek el Maadi, a poor area in the district of Maadi. The town of Maadi (about 30 minutes outside of Cairo) has a population of approximately 4,000 Sudanese refugees. From these 4,000, about 45% are children from 1 to 17 years old. GCDBA focuses its services on this population, but seeks to work together with other organizations to serve those in areas with high concentrations of refugees, such as Arba wa Nus, Maadi, and Ain Shams.

Gugu serves a community of an estimated 190 direct beneficiaries, made up of many who have not been interviewed or have been rejected by UNHCR and therefore have no access to their humanitarian and other services. Beneficiaries are asylum seekers mainly from South Sudan and Darfur, but also include those from Somalia, Eritrea and Ethiopia.

In our community, there are few affordable educational alternatives, so we place great importance on serving as many refugee children as possible. Without the GuGu Learning Center, many refugee children would grow up without ever attending school. This is the main reason that the founding members were interested in creating a school—to give children a chance at a better future and way of life. Our primary school currently provides education to 106 children in levels 1 through 5, divided among a morning and an afternoon shift. The kindergarten program serves 40 lovable kids. Our teachers come from many different African cultures, but the majority of our teachers are Sudanese refugees and the staff is supplemented by volunteers mainly from the United States. We are also hoping to establish a children’s sports program that will provide a place for children to play while giving them an opportunity to exercise and eat nutritional snacks regularly

The Gugu Adult Program provides services to refugee adults and youth in the area. We currently provide computer training classes to members of the community. GCDBA also coordinates vocational training through Coptic Evangelical Organization for Social Services (CEOSS). The Adult Education Program is in its foundational stages, providing English training to youth and adults in three different levels, including an advanced level program that also instructs students in mathematics, social studies, and science.

I currently have been focusing my activities around the services of Gugu. I have been teaching several subjects and grades at the learning center and also placing much energy into restoring the adult education program. Gugu is only the beginning...