The EFG Hermes Foundation has inaugurated newly renovated facilities in Al Makhzan Village in Upper Egypt’s Qena governorate as part of a joint effort with the Kuwaiti Initiative for the Support of the Egyptian People. 

The project, which has received the full support of the Governor of Qena, General Abdel Hamid El Haggan, is the latest phase in the Foundation’s ongoing effort to promote the integrated development of impoverished rural areas in Egypt. 

The EGP9m ($1.01m) project was made possible through funding from the Kuwaiti Initiative and the extensive effort of the EFG Hermes Foundation since late 2014. 

It has helped build homes for more than 35 families in the village and provided healthcare services. 

An integral part of the project focused on the improvement of education in the community. 

The construction of a new school building has improved the student-to-classroom ratio. 

Classrooms have been outfitted with new furniture and science laboratory equipment, and 1,400 school bags with all needed stationery for students arrived in time for the start of the new school year. 

Additionally, a renovated health unit has been upgraded with new equipment, giving it the capacity to serve 20,000 residents from Al Makhzan and nearby villages. A new bakery has been built with a capacity to produce 4,000 loaves per day to ensure a consistent and affordable supply of bread and create employment opportunities for local residents. 

Hanaa Helmy, Head of EFG Hermes’ CSR department and CEO of the EFG Hermes Foundation, said: “We are truly delighted to see the results of the hard work and dedication to this project come to life. Since its inception, this results-oriented joint effort with the Kuwaiti Initiative has placed the people of the Al Makhzan village at the forefront.” 

“We wanted to make a sustainable and positive impact on the residents of this village; to do that, we adopted a comprehensive approach to community development that does not focus on a single area, but rather aims to rehabilitate communities as a whole,” she said. 

An important aspect of the project is the village-wide sanitation and the procurement of a sanitation truck managed and run by the local community development association CDA to generate income by providing services to adjacent villages. 

HE Dr. Ghada Wali, Egypt’s Minister of Social Solidarity, who announced the joint project launch in late 2014, emphasised the importance of collaborative efforts such as these between the public and private sectors, while also extending appreciation to the Kuwaiti Initiative for its support of development efforts in the project. 

“The rehabilitation of Al Makhzan was an extensive project that took two years of exemplary joint-efforts that successfully tackled challenges facing the impoverished rural community of Al Makhzan,” Wali said.   

Adla Al-Sayer, Head of the Kuwaiti Initiative for the Support of the Egyptian People, said, “With the help of an established entity such as the EFG Hermes Foundation, our initiative was able to identify real challenges facing Upper Egypt’s underprivileged communities and extend the necessary resources to bring about a holistic development framework. The success of this project lies in the fact that all resources have been carefully allocated and based on careful studies conducted by our partners on-the-ground.”

The two-year-old partnership is a testament to the strong ties between Egypt and Kuwait as well as the Foundation’s unwavering commitment to sustainable development and the implementation of integrated solutions to the challenges facing communities in rural and underserviced areas in Egypt.