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The following is from The Global Fund for Women's NETWORK NEWS.

The Global Fund for Women can be reached at: <gfw@igc.apc.org> or:
2480 Sand Hill Road, Suite 100,
Menlo Park, CA 94025, USA.
Tel: (415) 854-0420, Fax: (415) 854-8050.
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CARE FOR GIRLS COMMITTEE
Cairo, Egypt

The circumcision of girls is an age-old tradition in Egypt, performed by
midwives in Muslim and Christian communities throughout the country.  In
Beni Sueif, Upper Egypt, in 1981, a group of women who believe that the
practice is physically and psychologically harmful to girls came together
to form the Care for Girls Committee.  Care for Girls set the goal of
changing public attitudes toward female circumcision through extensive
outreach programs.

During the course of its first nine years of activism, which focused
solely on female circumcision, the group came to understand that combating
the practice cannot be done in isolation; circumcision must be seen in
connection with numerous other issues affecting the status of Egyptian
women and girls.  In 1990 Care for Girls changed course, describing their
new program as the "project on awareness building for girls' rights and
combating female  choose
husbands and friends of the opposite sex; the social position of midwives
and their need for further education; and women's subordination in society
in general.

In addition to this alternative media campaign, The Care for Girls
Committee has initiated meetings with village leaders, field workers,
mothers and mothers-in-law, girls, and boys to discuss traditional
practices.  (They meet separately with these different categories of
people.) Broader seminars and consultations have brought together over six
hundred local leaders, priests, nuns, doctors, nurses, and field workers
to examine the issues.  The Committee has also taken advantage of the
"Decade for Children, 1988-98," promoted by Egyptian President Mubarak, to
call for legislation to safeguard the rights of girls and women.
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