Urgent! Help Children in Garbage City, Cairo

Happy House Nursery 2025.

The Happy House Nursery is a daycare for children living right in the heart of Mokattam, “Mansheya Nasir” or better known as “Garbage City”. This very basic daycare was started in February 2021, by Afaf, a Copitc woman living in the area. The neighborhood “Garbage City” is named as such because the majority of the people living in the area are Cairo’s garbage collectors, in which the streets are lined with filth. The families suffer from extreme poverty and are prone to diseases due to the unhygienic living quarters. The daycare is located in an alleyway inside of a dark building that is surrounded by rubbish, causing difficulty to provide the children with adequate care.

Afaf created Happy House after losing her job as a nursery manager during the pandemic. As a single parent of three children, she needed to find a way of providing for them. Afaf charges 200 Egyptian pounds ($4 or £3 ) each month per child, which is not enough to properly provide the children with a safe environment and a basic hot meal. Afaf’s income from Happy House barely covers rent and utilities, let alone healthy foods, outings, or luxuries at times such as Christmas and Easter.

The nursery cares for 55 children ranging from infants to seven years old from 8am-5:30pm. The nursery can barely provide materials for the children to learn and play and has very limited space and proper supplies. Although the nursery provides a hot meal each lunchtime, it is generally plain pasta or rice and the children are obviously malnourished due to lack of calcium, fruits, and vegetables.

Happy House nursery is creating a fundraiser as a way to raise awareness of the poverty in Garage City and to raise money for the children to enable them to enjoy a monthly outing, also to have funds for stationary (which at present they have very little) and fresh fruit daily, along with other luxuries such as milk, cheese and eggs. Anemia is rife for the people and kids living inside garbage city and in extreme cases some kids even have rickets. Every little donation will to help bring some joy, health and happiness into these children’s lives.

I lived in Cairo for a year in 2022 and spent the time volunteering 3 times a week at Happy House. My heart has remained with them since then and I send money on a monthly basis to support them. I feel by setting up this page it would be a great benefit and I would be able to offer them more support that they desperately need.

many thanks,