Coptic Evangelical Organization for Social Services (CEOSS)
Coptic Evangelical Organization for Social Services (CEOSS)
Is an Egyptian nonprofit organization. Our mission is to promote the sanctity, equity, and harmony of life. It seeks to contribute to the transformation of society by nurturing moral and spiritual awareness, enhance decent life, justice, and co-existence, instill moral and spiritual awareness in society, boost the feelings of belonging and respect diversity.
CEOSS pays a lot of focus and attention to the issues of coexistence, peacebuilding, diversity and acceptance of the other. It also emphasizes the importance of dialogue as an effective mechanism that contributes to building bridges of understanding, promoting pluralism and confronting hate speech. CEOSS has many dialogue programs on these issues, which are being implemented on the local, Arab, and international levels. Intellectuals, religious leaders, media, academics and leaders from civil society participate in these programs.
Partnership and integration with religious institutions, ministries, universities, and Civil society organizations is one of the most important strategies of CEOSS work these strategies translated into different programs.
At the national level: that includes a program for building the capacities of young leaders in the field of dialogue, (this includes working with religious leaders, preachers, academics and media professionals, also there is a program for Gaining Support and Advocacy and another program named Integrated Development Model program which contributes to the advancing of the role of dialogue in the marginalized communities.
At the international level :The programs in that level aims to building bridges of trust and understanding by providing an example of dialogue between global cultures , one of these programs is Arab- Arab Dialogue which started in 2004 and aims at promoting dialogue on issues of common concern and creating a common Arabic vision on these issues among Arab civil society organizations to disseminate learned experiences and the best practices for positive coexistence. In 2013 the members of the program agreed to establish a network under the name (The Dialogue Network in Arab Area) with membership of 18 organization represent 8 Arab countries (Egypt – Jordan – Palestine – Lebanon- Iraq – Tunisia – Morocco – Saudi Arabia)
CEOSS work in several development programs (working with small farmers, youth, economic development, gender, children at risk, housing, building capacity for CDAs, humanitarian interventions, health, eye health ) CEOSS also focuses on the empowerment and inclusion of the persons with disabilities and enables them to attain their rights without any discrimination. In the year 2005, CEOSS established “ERADA factory”, which is a not-for-profit entity that produces mobility aids and provides accessibility work for the places to be accessible for the persons with disabilities, especially the very poor and needy ones. ERADA factory manufactures mobility aids for the persons with disabilities: wheelchairs, paralysis devices, clutches and artificial limbs. Furthermore, the factory provides maintenance services for the old and dilapidated mobility devices through campaigns carried out by a mobile van that is equipped to carry out this maintenance work.
ERADA Program: The program aims at making both the internal and external environment accessible in order to include persons with disabilities in public life and developing mobility aids models “wheelchairs” according to quality standards in accordance to the needs of persons with disabilities
ERADA factory carries out access audit for the Egyptian service providing institutions, as per the international and Egyptian criteria, and applies the required accessibility work to allow better access for the persons with disabilities to these places.
ERADA factory provides a model for an inclusive work environment for the persons with disabilities as the technicians working in the factory are persons with disabilities themselves.
ERADA factory succeeded in producing and distributing 20000 (twenty thousand) mobility aids and provided accessibility work for several places like (Egyptian universities, youth centers, hospitals, some ministerial establishments, religious places, rehabilitation offices and facilities of some non-governmental organizations.