CAIRO — Gamal Talaat’s daughter suffered from lack of oxygen at birth, which caused severe disabilities in her hearing and body movement. While this brought much pain and shock to the family, it led Talaat, a former army officer, to launch a project to help thousands of women around Egypt.

Talaat’s initiative, called el-Masryeen Awla (Egyptians First), started in 2006 in public parks where he taught women — with or without disabilities — to earn a living through handicrafts. Since 2014, the project has continued in training centers in Cairo and in Giza, which have 200 trainers and 400 trainees.

“I had the means to send my daughter to a hospital and care for her. But then I started thinking about what I could do for others who were not as fortunate — people with disabilities, people with economic needs, women, widows and divorcees who have no income. After I retired, I felt it was my duty to do something that could help them,” Talaat told Al-Monitor.

Then Talaat, who holds the honorary military title of “fighter,” started on a long battle to reach Egyptian women in need and arm them with skills to turn their homes into small factories of production.