An elderly woman came to His Eminence Bishop Paula, Metropolitan of Tanta and its dependencies and told him that she had a great fear of the future. When he asked her about the reason, she said: “I have devoted my life to serve of my son who has Down syndrome and always needs special care, but what will be his fate when I die? That was the beginning of our story…The beginning of our dream. Immediately, His Eminence Bishop Paula found that he was about to carry on a special mission related to the lives and future of many heroes of Down syndrome. On one hand they need special care, and on the other hand this special care requires a lot of money which some families could be able to afford and other could not. Moreover, if they could afford these expenses for a month or a year, they could not afford them throughout their lives. His Eminence Bishop Paula asked himself a question, “Do we have a project in Egypt that fulfills the aspirations of these citizens?!” The answer came after a long research and it was “no”. Most of the charitable institutions and associations that care about our heroes of Down syndrome strive, but in an unorganized manner, or they are led by individual efforts hat is not based on a rigorous scientific study. And here came the idea of establishing Al-Folk Foundation to become the first integrated project in Egypt that provides full care, rehabilitation, motivation and preparation for heroes of Down syndrome for a healthy coexistence with society.

Some time had passed and the idea was still an “idea”. The difficulties and challenges of establishing this huge project were very significant. On December 24, 2018, His Eminence Bishop Paula was listening to the speech of President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, which he gave on that day to celebrate the day of people with special needs. Bishop Paula’s attention was greatly caught when the president said “These are our sons, and we have to do everything and challenge all difficulties for their sake.” Since then, the idea turned into a project and we started the first steps of implementation. No matter how difficult the challenges were, we must strive and try and challenge the difficulties in order to create something exceptional and different for our sons. Man seeks success and God grants it.

His Eminence Bishop Paula immediately began studying advanced international models specialized in this field, specifically in Italy and Switzerland, in order to start from the point where others ended. In addition, this would enable us to create a global model on the land of Egypt, including what the world has reached in this field together with new marks that makes the Egyptian model a pioneering experience in the care, rehabilitation and integration of people with special mental abilities, especially heroes of Down syndrome.

Since the world gives way to those who know where to head, His Eminence Bishop Paula, from the very first moment, laid down his vision of transforming the idea into global models present on the land of Egypt that provide integrated services in a unique way to the target groups and support the priority care individuals to lead a just life like others. Neither did people with special needs have a control of the features they are created with nor of environment in which they grew up.

We started the construction of the project and nearly completed it. Soon, the dream is coming true and hundreds and thousands of Down syndrome heroes’ hopes to find an integrated organization that provides them with integrated support and qualifies them to integrate with the surrounding society and normally coexist with it will come true.

Al-Folk, Let us all live a just life!