Maggie Gobran

Maggie Gobran (also known as Mama Maggie) is a Coptic Orthodox Christian from Egypt, who founded the charity organization the Stephanus-children in Mokattam, outside Cairo in Egypt. Since 1985 she has ministered to the poor, sick, orphaned, and dying people (especially children) who are an integral part of collecting and processing Cairo's municipal solid waste in Zabbaleen.
Maggie Gobran was part of the upper class in Egypt and had not been in Zabbaleen before Christmas 1985, which are an Egyptian community of mainly Coptic Christians who were allowed to collect and dispose of the city of Cairo's waste by feeding it to their pigs. She was handing out Christmas gifts presented to poor children and leave again. But at one of the garbage mounds she saw something moving, and began to dig. She found a small child, living buried in garbage. Afterwards, she found another one. So she chose to devote her life to the children. Before she started working in Zabbaleen, she worked at the American University in Cairo.
Thousands of children and families are helped through the organization she founded. Kindergartens, which has between 250 and 400 children aged two to six years. Here, the children get food, health check, vocational education, camp residence, and hope. She is known for wearing white clothes, and she says it's because the pure heart will see God. She is a deeply religious women and she state, "Every time I touch a child, I touch God. For an honor! A foretaste of heaven. I am the one being blessed by the children, it's not the other way. I have received so much and can never repay".
Gobran have several times been nominated for the Nobel Prize, and been compared with Mother Teresa. "I am very inspired by Mother Teresa, but I am not worthy to wash her feet.", Maggie Gobran stated.

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