Mark Voss

COPTIC ORPHANS

Coptic Orphans' "Serve to Learn" Program. Every summer young volunteers (over 17 years old) from around the English-speaking world come to Egypt to work with children at one of a number of Coptic Orphans-sponsored schools. The volunteers teach English to the children while also serving as role models, giving their students encouragement and sharing thier life stories with them.

On the road from Beni Suef to the Coptic church and school in the village of El-Diabiyya.
   
Sarah, a Serve to Learn volunteer, teaches students a song in English. Sarah is an Egyptian-American college student in the United States.
   
Arabic vocabulary posted on a classroom wall.
     
  
   
A student takes geography notes in English. The vast majority of Egyptian Christians have small crosses tattooed on their hands or wrists.
   
     
  
   
  
     
  
   
Serve to Learn volunteer Germeen hugs one of her students. Germeen is an Egyptian-American high school senior in the United States.
   
     
  
Germeen leads the students in a game resembling "Simon Says" in the church courtyard.
   
  
Serve to Learn volunteers Sarah, Germeen and Paloma practice singing hymns with Michael, Coptic Orphans' coordinator for the region.
     
  
Sarah, Paloma and Germeen surprise the students with water balloons in playful response to a student-led water fight that occurred earlier that morning.
   
Fr. Rizkallah, the priest for El-Diabiyya, visits the family home of one of his students. He and Nermien, a representative from Coptic Orphans' Cairo office, discuss the family's current situation while Fr. Rizkallah's son listens on. Many of the children whom Coptic Orphans assist are fatherless, with widows struggling to provide for food, clothing and education for their families.
   
     
  
   
Fr. Rizkallah sanctifies water before blessing the family and their home with it.