Rutgers student-led organization delivers aid to children in developing countries
Rutgers students have joined together with other college students to help children from communities struggling economically in Egypt and Ecuador through the organization Save the Children of the Developing World (SCDW), according to a press release.
SCDW is a student-run nonprofit that aims to provide personalized aid to places such as schools and orphanages in Quito, Ecuador and Cairo, Egypt, according to the release. It has helped more than 400 children in these two areas through various initiatives, said founder and CEO Abanoub Armanious, a School of Environmental and Biological Sciences sophomore.
He started the organization in 2017 as a high school student after traveling to visit his family in Egypt and witnessing the neglect children were experiencing. That same summer, he went to Ecuador for a research project and saw similar neglect. Given the lack of resources in such developing nations, he said these children do not receive the attention and care that they need.
“When I walked along the streets of Egypt and Ecuador, I saw malnourished children working arduous jobs,” Armanious said, according to the release. “If they had access to basic educational and nutritional resources, that would not have been the case and so, I vowed that when I came home, I would try to make a difference.”
The nonprofit is currently working on four projects: Project Backpack, Project Educate, Project Health and Project Shelter.
Project Backpack provides children with care packages containing day-to-day essentials, according to the release. As part of this project, SCDW sent school supplies to the Qalyubia Governorate in August 2019 and personal care products to the Cairo Governorate in December 2020 to curb coronavirus disease (COVID-19) transmission.
Project Educate provides resources that help children to pursue an education, including uniforms, shoes and meals, Armanious said. SCDW gave these to three orphanages in Cairo upon request and a foamy rug to an educational community organization in Quito to relieve students’ foot and leg fatigue as they participated in workshops, according to the website.
Most recently, SCDW entered a third launch of Project Educate which involves providing school supplies to a school in Ecuador, said Joshua Oconer, the organization’s director of programs and a School of Environmental and Biological Sciences sophomore.
“With (COVID-19) and everything going on, especially in Ecuador where they don’t have the best resources … we wanted to try to make that transition from in-person to online for them a little bit easier, so by sending them the school supplies, we were able to help them,” he said.
Project Health and Project Shelter have been announced but not yet launched, Armanious said. Project Health will aim to provide children with equitable access to healthcare while Project Shelter will aim to ensure a safe and healthy home environment for them to live in.
Mark Youssef, the marketing director of SCDW and a School of Environmental and Biological Sciences sophomore, said an important standard at SCDW is providing continual care through its projects, not just short-term solutions.
“Not only do we want to provide the support once, but we want to come back and constantly provide them with support,” he said. “We want to see that they're actually improving in terms of their lifestyle.”
SCDW currently has six chapters in New Jersey and is looking to expand more in the near future, according to the press release. Armanious, Youssef and Oconer said they invite more students at the high school and college level to join in their efforts.
“We're a nonprofit run by (youth),” Youssef said. “We’re assisting other children in other countries who are like us, and we want to provide them with the best assistance that we can.”
