The Need:
In the last few years Egypt has experienced socioeconomic changes that affected the structure of urban families. This created new situations of need, particularly in the field of health and care for the elderly. There are also an increasing number of individuals that are in need of short or long term non-hospital health care. Working family members rarely are available, have the time, or have the necessary skills to provide the required health services and care at home. All this brings the need for training home health care providers (HHCP). Statistically, it is estimated that about 400,000 elderly people are in need of some kind of assisted living to be able to continue living at their homes. If only 10% of those can afford to hire a caregiver, there would be a need to train at least 40000 care givers in the near future to meet that demand.

The need was translated into a program that would improve the living conditions of those in need for short or long term home health care by providing them with well trained and compassionate home health care providers that work through a reliable and accountable system. There were many barriers to such a program in the community, and a partnership between three reputable organizations in the community was formed to 1) give credibility and legality to the program, 2) to provide legitimate employment opportunities for the graduates as home health care providers, and 3) to provide dependable and trustworthy services to the community. Care with Love began as a training program developed in partnership with three organizations: the Center for Geriatric Services (a not-for-profit orgnization of the Synod of the Nile in partnership with the Coptic Evangelical Organization for Social Services), an NGO, and Asalam Hospital in Mohandessin. The objectives were as follows:

1) To provide a comprehensive Arabic curriculum for training home health care providers.
2) To provide training of trainers to create a co rum of trainers for such programs.
3) To create new job opportunities for the unemployed young people in the field of home health care.
4) To establish customer services units to provide affordable, accessible and reliable services to those who need it.

The first training started in September of 1996.

The CWL Organization:

Over the years the CWL program succeeded and home health care became a reality in the Egyptian community. The job of a home health care provider has become acceptable by many of the unemployed youth as a reputable job. The program was evaluated and it was the consensus of the three partners to register the program as a not-for- profit organization to insure the continuity of home health care in the community.The CWL organization for home health care was registered under the Ministry of Social Affairs in July of 2003 (#5241), and it started operating as a stand alone organization as of January 2004.