It was impossible for the Scouts to continue their sea activities while looking at children suffering from abuse, neglect and exploitation. Therefore they decided to launch a project in co-operation with the UNICEF.

Since 1999, the focus of the project is child-centred protection and development with a special emphasis on working girls. Several activities are developed to improve children’s living and working conditions.

Weekly gatherings take place every Sunday from 09.00-16.00 hours where the children are offered a variety of services including a hot meal. The services on offer cover social care, cultural activities, literacy classes, health care, sports, music, technical skills, vocational training and art. Scouting activities are also included.

A series of training events run for owners of the workshops on topics such as occupational safety and security has also been provided. A relationship is built up with the owners of workshops with the aim to make them aware of children needs and encourage them to improve working conditions. Since the beginning of the project, almost 2000 working children have benefited from the project. Several of them have become Scout leaders and contribute to the development of the project on a voluntary basis.

The Sea-Scout centre of Alexandria will become one of the first SW bases and will welcome young people willing to accomplish a voluntary service there and contribute to the project.

When launching this project, the Sea-Scout leaders didn’t imagine that they were the pioneers of a new area of social involvement in Scouting. Thanks to the involvement of the Arab Scout Office, several institutional partners such as the UNICEF and the International Labour Organisation gave their support. A Regional Seminar was organised in 2003 to disseminate this model of project across the Arab countries; a new seminar is planned in February 2005 with the same objective at world level this time.

The Sea-Scouts of Alexandria are “Scouts of the World”.