Haya Karima priorities empowering Egyptian women, provides loans for small projects

CAIRO – 29 November 2021: Egypt’s national developmental initiative “Haya Karima” has been working to change the living conditions in Egyptian villages, and bring about a transformation of the countryside to achieve integrated development.

As the initiative has set goals to support the national industry, provide job opportunities, and reduce unemployment, it has also worked expand the percentage of women’s participation in the labor market and improve their income and thus raise the livelihoods’ standards.

The initiative works to achieve economic empowerment for women by enhancing their participation in the labor market, in addition to establishing 3,000 early childhood nurseries.

Likewise, women mainly benefit from loans provided through microfinance associations and institutions, in addition to benefiting from projects of the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Authority.

Women represent 78 percent of the total beneficiaries of the Takaful and Karama program, of whom 18 percent are female breadwinners, at a cost of EGP 3.4 billion annually.

Haya Karima provided simple interest loans through the “Your Project” program and the Local Development Fund, to establish small and micro projects aimed at providing job opportunities for youths, women and farmers in the targeted villages.

Funding for rural women development projects has been increased from 5,000 to 10,000 pounds. The target during the next phase is to lend micro-projects to provide 20 thousand job opportunities at a cost of 200 million pounds.

Haya Karima initiative also contributed to an increase in the value of soft loans to 1.4 billion pounds, benefiting 220,000 women in 2021, to establish projects for breadwinners, widows and divorced women, according to the capabilities of each family.