Collecting Stories with Caritas in Upper Egypt

“During the last presidential elections, some men came up to me and told me “Here is some money and I will vote for you”. But this time I could read the ballot so I told the men I would vote myself. This made me feel so proud.”

Sprockler goes Egypt! Four local offices of Caritas Egypt started using Sprockler to collect stories from their beneficiaries.

Earlier this year, around 20 Caritas employees from all over Egypt attended a storytelling capacity training by Lisette Gast and Petra de Boer. They learned all about Sprockler, research tool based on storytelling. The training is part of the Organisational Reform Programme of Caritas Egypt that Perspectivity is facilitating.

This September, staff from the offices in Minia, Assiut, Sohag and Luxor organised their first story collecting sessions, supported by Anne van Marwijk from Perspectivity and Monica Nabil from the Alexandria office. Gathering the experiences of the beneficiaries allows Caritas to learn from what they are doing for monitoring and evaluation purposes. Additionally, these stories can be used to communicate about Caritas’ work to other beneficiaries, donors and the wider community.

“When my daughter asked me to help her with her homework, it made me sad that I couldn’t help her. I used to just guess sometimes to help her. Now that I participated in the Caritas literacy classes, I can help her. I recently entered in a spelling competition in Cairo and I won! With the prize money, I set up a literacy project back in my village. And I now have enough money to pay the school fees of my children.”

More info: contact Lisette Gast


See all Stories