Abjad provided their modified Adult Education system – Light Your Way - to the Abjad World Foundation, a non-profit organization providing educational services to the Egyptian community, and which had recently been awarded 400 adult education classes in the governorates of Minya, Cairo Giza, and Qalyubiya as part of the Misr ElKheir Adult Education Initiative.  Results for phase 1, 2, 3 and 4 of this initiative have shown results of 87% passing rate.  Final results for 1500 students tested independently by the Bureau for Adult Education in December 2012 showed results of 90%.

Abjad was awarded the winning bid for public tender no. 1 and 9 for the Early Childhood Educational Enhancement Program (ECEEP).  This tender was designed for the provision of educational materials to the kindergarten departments in 1325 public primary schools in Egypt nationwide.  Although mainly focusing on wooden puzzles – which were specially designed for this tender, Abjad was also able to provide the patented plastic transforming letters to these schools in addition to Abjad’s full range of audio CD’s.

In cooperation with the World Bank, the Ministry of Education released a closed tender for the design and execution of 20 Resource Rooms – 10 in the Sohag Governorate and 10 in the Greater Cairo Area.  These Resource Rooms give children with learning difficulties and disabilities the opportunity to continue their education in Mainstream schools (children with an IQ of over 52) and yet have access to a facility within which their particular disability is addressed during normal school hours.  Abjad was awarded this tender and was given the opportunity to design these rooms, supply all the required educational systems and programs as well as train the specialists assigned to these rooms.

2008 marked the pilot of Abjad’s Adult Education and Illiteracy Eradication program “Light Your Way.”  Over 60 students and 20 teachers were interviewed and it became apparent that the National Bureau for Adult Education suffered from three main obstacles – Classes were not attracting enough students (only 1 million out of 15 million Egyptian illiterates applied), only 800,000 remained in class for the duration of the 9 month course and sat for the final exam, and of those only 400,000 passed.  Abjad designed a pilot program and set up four classes in the districts of Maadi, Tura, Dar Al Salam and Basateen.  These areas were chosen since each had its own particular characteristics.  Attraction to these classes was extremely high as Abjad provided a separate center for students to bring their children with them and provided well-lit and aired classrooms with a computer, all students remained till the end of the course, and 39 out of 40 students passed.  The 40th student, who sat for the exam at a later date, also passed.  Results of these pilot classes were carefully analyzed and the program modified.  One of the major changes was to add an additional two phases to the program to encompass basic grammar and composition/comprehension passages – a major stumbling block for most students.  The course was also condensed into a 6-month time format and classes were expanded to cater for 15 students rather than ten.

Abjad has been recognized both as a publisher and as a children’s book author with the Egyptian Ministry of Education’s Biblioteque – the “Bible” for all Egyptian schools both public and private since by law, schools cannot acquire any publications which have not been recognized and listed.

Abjad was asked to produce a short documentary to raise awareness amongst schoolchildren in regards to the importance of demining the North-West Coastline as part of the national campaign conducted by the Ministry of International Cooperation in tandem with the UNDP.

In an attempt to give back to society, Abjad donated its entire marketing budget in 2008 to the Adopt-A-School initiative.  This initiative targeted 7 public schools in the districts of Maadi, Tura, Dar Al Salam and Basateen.  Although the initial plan was to provide these schools with educational materials, Abjad soon shifted its focus towards providing both the students and teachers a more humane environment to work in if the educational process was to become even slightly effective.  Most classrooms were packed with a minimum of 60 and in some cases 128 students.  Many students had no desks and those that did had to endure sitting on splintered wooden planks.  Teachers had no desks or chairs in the classroom, and no lounge forcing them to correct papers and plan their classes in the playground, a 200 square meter area of sand. Only two bathrooms with 10 “toilets” were available to over 2400 students- none of which had running water.  Teachers had no bathroom to speak of.  During summer break Abjad built new bathrooms, fixed all the plumbing issues, provided new desks, installed ceiling fans, re-wired the entire electrical circuits, built a teachers lounge and gave these schools a much needed face-lift in the form of a fresh coat of paint.