FACE and Friends – Partners in Building Futures!

We at Friends were over the moon recently at the news that one of our CYTI partners in Egypt, FACE, who operate in Cairo, had won a prestigious award – the WISE Award 2014 with their ‘Street Children; Reintegration Through Education’ project.

FACE have been a part of the Friends CYTI Alliance since 2008. What is CYTI Alliance? Put very simply, it is an alliance, powered by Friends, of Non-Governmental Organizations and Government services working together to provide the highest standards of direct services to marginalized children & youth and for marginalized children and youth, their families and their communities. CYTI partners together develop innovative approaches, create higher standards, influence policies and multiply their impact, borne out by the international recognition of FACE in receiving the WISE award.

The history of our partnership with FACE began in 2008 with a basic assessment conducted by Friends staff of FACE and of the situation of street children in Cairo. This led to field training of FACE staff in outreach work and topics such as HIV/Aids, reproductive health and basic social work. Training continued to form a significant part of the partnership during the next two years, with CYTI staff traveling regularly to Cairo to build the capacity of FACE staff in the areas of finance, management, narcotics and surveys. Suggestions were made in developing a case management system, and training delivered in that also.

CYTI is never a one-sided relationship, so we were delighted when in 2010 the FACE Team came to visit us in Cambodia – we have some great memories of that exchange visit! In the following years our exchanges built on mutually reinforcing the systems we had established with them, such as child protection, case management and finance, and assisting FACE in developing life skills projects, income generation projects, monitoring and evaluation systems, drugs responses and transitional homes. We also supported the FACE Team in fundraising, an area which all NGO’s will eagerly seek support in!

The partnership with FACE is a great example of how CYTI works – mutual benefits to all partners, and an increased impact in addressing the issues we are tackling together… and of course, it is wonderful when the world recognizes that, so congratulations once more to our partner FACE in Egypt, WISE award winners, 2014, and we look forward to many more years of working with them – together, building futures!