Report from BHW Egypt Partnership Facilitator Following Visit

We visited Assiut on the 5th and 6th of November. We arrived about 5 pm, just on dusk and visited one of the Light Centres in Al-Nazla community, a tutoring programme run by the Soul Salvation Society. It is the first time we have been able to visit one, so was good to see. The young people running them are very impressive. We spent about 40 minutes there; all the kids were very happy to see us. We then drove through Assiut to the SSC and sat in on the start of the youth service. There were about 120 young people. We also visited the fashion centre and spent some time listening to them talk about how it’s going and the impact it’s having. They are very encouraged how it’s working out.  

Recent Events

Light Education Centres

The mission of Light Education is: Building educated and healthy children’s personalities for a better life. They are running three centres, two of them are in adjacent apartments in the suburb of Al-Nazra that has no church. The other is in the Al-Arbaeen neighbourhood. 

They have invitations to start more Light Education Centres and long lists of kids wanting to be involved. 

Last summer they intensified their summer programmes and began teaching some more practical lessons and some fun ones including Teach Me – teaching children how to work and about the value of it; beading; swimming; photography; video editing on phones; football. They still do education lessons, and many parents come and watch. They run competitions and prizes like school bags and material. 

Because of the connection to whole families, they have begun running programmes for families. This has opened up whole new ministry opportunities which they want to explore and for us to consider.  

Light Fashion Centre

The mission of Light Fashion is: Helping mothers and young people face the pressures of life to be influential in their families and society for a better life. 

Some of the July – September highlights are:

They established a new agreement with everyone working in the sewing workshop. At the beginning of the year, they agreed with them to work for a period of six months, after which new people would join in their place. They encouraged them to continue the work they have learned, and for those who have the ability to start and manage their own project, they support them by providing a sewing machine as a loan.

The new agreement included a renewed contract, some workers for three months and some for six months, in order to allow space for new workers to join the workshop. This brings a challenge to train new people and help them reach a strong manufacturing skill level so that product quality is not affected. 

They organised an evangelistic family conference. God continues to add new workers to the sewing workshop, which allows them to connect with new people every year through this conference. God greatly blessed this year’s conference. Those who led and organized it came from the discipleship groups that started after last year’s conference. The addition of new mothers in the workshop gave the opportunity to meet new families. This year, around 10 new families joined, nearly half the conference attendees! During the conference they focused on the theme of Restoration in their lives through five sessions: 1) Restoring relationship with God; 2) Restoring the mind; 3) Restoring the soul; 4) Restoring identity; 5) The blessings of restoration. There were powerful prayer times, moments of repentance and returning to the Lord which had a remarkable impact on the families, especially the men. After returning from the conference, new men joined the discipleship group. They shared how deeply the conference touched their lives and the lives of their families. Many of these families hadn’t attended church for a long time. Due to the rising cost of living, they cannot afford to travel anywhere for a family vacation, but this conference met two needs: it delivered a gospel message to families, and it created a warm family and social atmosphere with leisure time and fun activities like swimming.

They have worked hard to try and help people they are in contact with from the families to obtain employment. They were able to employ several young people inside and outside the workshop by making agreements with various shop owners, such as clothing stores, pharmacies, paint shops, ice cream shops, etc. The fruitful part of this programme was prayer times and reading the Bible before work from 9 to 10 every day. They take a text and pray with it, like, The Sermon on the Mount. At the beginning, this programme was for young people in middle school and high school for a period of three months during the summer. They started with seven young people until the number of workers in the workshop reached 17 young people. 

In addition, they completed a course for mothers working in the workshop called “You Are Precious” and this had a positive impact on their lives in terms of understanding themselves, forgiving others, managing money, and other topics. 

Personal Stories

This was written by the leader of one of the centres about ZS (in the blue) and her sister SS, mothers of some of the children at Light Education Centre.

“Last week, we were explaining the lesson on forgiveness, and they argued with us and their voices were loud. They were objecting to the principle of forgiveness. Today, Z came and shared that she had been arguing with her mother-in-law and had been estranged from her for a while. She said: After the forgiveness lesson, I reflected on my actions and went to try talking to her. Everything was resolved, and we became friends again. My children and husband were happy for me and send their prayers for you all.”

MA was trained and worked at Light Fashion for several years. When they changed their policy to graduate those who had been there for some time to bring in others, M was given a sewing machine to start a business in her own home. She did this and it has been going for a year. She is making repayments and is earning much more than she did before. Also, the big advantage is that she can work around family times rather than fixed hours which suit her family needs.  

Partnership's Influence within the Community

There is a lot going on all the time in the ministry. We visited the students centre they have established in the basement for young people to come and study. It was packed with more than 50 people hard at work. Anyone can come and many people are contacted and drift into other programmes from initial contact here. 

We sat for a few minutes in on a midweek youth meeting with more than 120 university students. There are programmes going almost every night. 

Their multi-storey and many roomed building has meetings going at all hours, it’s a beehive of activity and impact. 

They have existed for almost 100 years (1927). For most of this time they have been serving the Christian community. They are now realigning their focus outwards and expect to be engaging with the majority people and expecting many to have their lives changed. Doing small things for them is very impactful as they are experiencing with the Light Education and Fashion Centres. These open the minds of people who soon request for the whole village to get the exposure.  

Ideas for the Future

Light Education Centres 

They want to purchase a vehicle to help with transporting the teachers to the Light Centres (not something BHW would fund). 

They want to increase the medical and health education for the women in impoverished areas, based on the children in the centres. They have a programme called “You are Precious,” which they want to push wider. They have already served 3,000 women in this way and want to extend it. Included in the programmes are discussions around women’s health, sexual issues, female genital circumcision and other personal issues as there is a great deal of shame around subjects like this and the women are unable to talk about it in normal family life and culture. There is huge confusion and misinformation around these issues, feelings are repressed and it causes trauma. They also provide menstrual pads. 

They want to open a new Light Education Centre in the Al-Fath and Al-Asara area and equip it during 2026. The cost of opening it, including rent and equipping the space with chairs, tables, whiteboards, screens, and paint, is 210,000 EGP (US$4,200). 

They currently rent two adjacent apartments in the Al-Nazla community in which they run two centres. The owner of the building is a family of three brothers who are currently in jail for drug dealing. They will be out of prison soon and they are not sure if things will change when the brothers are released. Right next door to the building is some land that has recently been cleared of a lot of rubbish and derelict buildings. The old man who owned it died and the children want to sell it to SSS. We saw the land and on it they want to build a large education centre, a medical centre, training halls, and a playground for children and youth. There is no church in this community. 

Light Fashion Centre

They want to open a recycled clothing ministry. It is 60% ready to start but the leadership thinks they should do it without outside help and start with what they’ve got. This is registered with the government, and they could receive second-hand clothing imports without import duty.

They want to help more women gain self-employment opportunities and help more young people get employment. This may well become an even bigger issue in the future that they want to address. 

Current Issues and Challenges

- The cost of doing ministry – it is one of those first world costs in a third world culture situations.

- Local people are under a lot of financial pressure and may struggle to pay the small fees that are being charged 

- Moving the teachers from where they live and where the church is based to the Light Centres is costing more each year

- Utility prices are increasing all the time 

- Because they run the Education centres in apartments, due to limited space they often face difficulties in dealing with other apartment owners. And they are unable to accommodate larger numbers in the centres given the variety of activities, not just classes for children but programmes for the mothers and families as well. Finding land in the Al-Arbaeen or Al-Nazla neighbourhoods presents a challenge. 

- Maintaining production skills as experienced workers graduate out of the project and new ones come in. 

- Providing sewing machines to individuals who have the ability to start their own business, one machine costs 23,000 EGP (US$460)

- Training and employing non-Christian mothers in this field. Some Christian employers will not employ non-Christians.

- Upgrading some machines to improve efficiency and speed of work and increase monthly production, such as the fabric spreading machine.  

Prayer and Praise Points

1) That the Light Education Centres are being so effective for the children
2) That they are able to develop closer relationships with the families and are now able to have input into the families, not just the children
3) That they have many more opportunities now to reach wider than the Christian communities

Comments

They are very thankful for our partnership and because of it they are now meeting hundreds more people a week they would never have imagined they would meet. 

The timing of our coming to them was very significant. They were emerging from the Revolution and for outsiders to come at that time it was miraculous. They never expected outsiders to show up, and the help has been a wonderful provision from God. 

Many new doors are opening into the Muslim community and opportunities they have never had before.