Fostering Opportunities in Rural Southern Areas

FORSA provides job opportunities for young men and women in rural areas. These youth support improved health information, health-seeking behavior, and access to quality health services for Egypt’s most vulnerable populations.

In Arabic, forsa means opportunity. True to its name, the USAID-funded Fostering Opportunities in Rural Southern Areas (FORSA) project was dedicated to providing opportunities to young women in Upper Egypt’s impoverished and underserved governorates of Souhag and Assiut

Pathfinder partnered with six umbrella NGOs, who oversaw 75 community development associations in Assiut and Souhag. The associations employed the project’s 1,350 outreach workers, who made monthly home visits to women of reproductive age to raise their awareness of critical health and social issues. 

Outreach workers counseled their clients on: maternal health; benefits of delaying marriage; child health; breastfeeding and infant care; gender equality; and family planning.

The project successfully extended opportunities to women of reproductive age throughout these troubled governorates by:

• Providing 1,403 local women with training and jobs
• Educating more than 112,500 women about essential health issues affecting them and their families
• Offering life skills and empowerment training to 8,604 women
• Assisting 2,650 women technically and financially to start their own businesses
• Building the capacity of local organizations to better serve their communities
• Creating vibrant networks to bring additional services and benefits to the communities of Assiut and Souhag

Read our photo blog on FORSA here >