"A Door of Hope" Targeting the Ultra-Poor (TUP) program

“Sawiris Job Creation Competition” to empower Upper Egyptians, was a good practical occasion to change our perspective on dealing with the issue of poverty and our understanding of the nature of poor communities. It has become clearer over time that poverty is not only "lack of money" but also the lack of education, health services, housing, awareness, and a consequence of social exclusion. Poverty is also inability to integrate and participate in society and decision making. Based on this perception, we adopted an approach that includes several integrated programs to tackle poverty of all dimensions.

In 2018, we launched the Bāb 'Amal "A Door of Hope" program in cooperation with the BRAC and Abdel Latif Jamel Poverty for Action Lab (J-PAL) to target the poorest families and provide them with sustainable pathways out of extreme poverty to a more stable situation. The different sequenced interventions of the program include provision of productive income-generating activities, improved income management and increased savings, immediate relief for basic needs, and longer- term focused mentoring which aims at changing the habits and mindset of the participants and community.

The program is funded by SFSD and aims at targeting 2,400 extreme poor households in the villages of Assiut and Sohag governorates, with a total budget of EGP 55 million, over 3 years.

The implementation work team consists of Dr. Ragi Assaad, Professor of Public Policy at the University of Minnesota, USA, who oversees and assist in the design of the program, J-PAL team as a research institution that measure the impact and evaluate the program, and BRAC team who provides technical support in project design and follow-up as the expert who designed this program.