“Akhbar El Mahrousa” January 2014

AKHBAR EL MAHROUSA January 2014, Issue No. 14

About Nahdet El Mahrousa Nahdet El Mahrousa (NM), meaning “Renaissance of Egypt”, is the first incubator of early-stage, innovative, social enterprises in Egypt and the Middle East. Since its establishment in 2003, the NM incubator has supported the ideas of high-potential change-agents and empowered them, through their innovations, to self-actualize as drivers of social change in Egypt. NM has incubated over 40 social enterprises – in areas such as youth development, education, employment, healthcare, and culture – which currently reach and impact over 10,000 individuals in Egypt. NM envisions a better Egypt: one developed through the active participation and belonging of its young professionals.

Content: About Nahdet El Mahrousa Page 1

NM Out and About

RiseUp Summit On the Road Info Sessions World Economic Forum Barclays Bank Egypt and NM promote employment through social entrepreneurship!

Bootcamps Page 2-4

Newly Incubated Social Enterprises

Incubate Ideas

Build Partnerships

Train Social Entrepreneurs

Enable an Ecosystem

The Paw Print Effect THAAT Jozour Nabd Mini Medina Education Square BioGas People Arab Origami Center Safarni Page 5-8

Featured Incubated Enterprise Nawaya

Page 9-10

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NM Out and About RiseUp Summit Enterprise Forum NM participated as a Community Partner in “RiseUp Summit”, Egypt’s first collaborative entrepreneurship summit. NM was represented in the exhibition space and on the panels.

On the Road

NM actively spread the word among established Egyptian startups and universities through our Career Entrepreneurship Development Offices (CEDO) in Cairo and Assiut.

NM’s Chairman Loay El Shawarby and Treasurer Dr. Ayman Ismail on a panel entitled “Can Accelerators and Incubators Make a Difference?”

Info Sessions NM had three information sessions at its headquarters and in two co-working spaces, Al Maqqar and The District.

World Economic Forum NM attended the World Economic Forum in Davos earlier this year. The forum presented an exciting opportunity to participate in panels and workshops and to network with leading policy-makers, executives and critics on the current macroeconomic climate.

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NM Out and About Barclays Bank Egypt and NM promote employment through social entrepreneurship!

On June 2013, Barclays Bank Egypt and Nahdet El Mahrousa (NM) partnered up for NM’s 7th round of incubation. The competition is titled “Social Innovation for Employment” and its core focus is job creation among youth. Five to seven social enterprises- chosen as winners- will receive capacity building services, technical assistance, infrastructure support and seed funding for a period of one year.

The competition’s launch took place on December 4th, 2013 and the application deadline was January 6th, 2014. 4 weeks into competition, and 3 campaigns later, the competition received 262 applications. While the winning 5-7 social start-ups will be announced on the 1st week of March 2014.

NM has shortlisted 31 teams who were invited to attend a 2-day bootcamp to enhance and further detail their applications. The teams at Barclays Bank Egypt and NM will then review the proposals and announce the 15 further shortlisted applicants on Feb 10th.

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NM Out and About Bootcamps NM organized two rounds of two day trainings to help the 31 shortlisted teams enhance the quality of their proposals.

Trainers:

Topics covered:

Tarek Fahmy, Commercial Operations Director, GE Aviation.

• How the brain works

Ayman Ismail, NM Treasurer, Abdel Latif Jameel Center Chair of Entrepreneurship at the American University in Cairo (AUC)

• Brainstorming & Brainwriting techniques

Jackie Kameel, NM Managing Director Omar Hazzaa, Marketing Manager, Toshiba

• Mindmapping

• Creative problem solving • Writing your problem statement • Business Modeling • Business Planning • Budgeting • 5 Whys • Market Sizing • Customer Acquisition • Product/Service development • Revenue Streams

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NM WELCOMES ITS NEWLY INCUBATED SOCIAL ENTERPRISES FOR THE YEAR 2014 THAAT

Jozour

A design and research, Cairo-based, social enterprise; Thaat empowers local artisans and emerging designers through holistic tailored solutions; combining design thinking approach and R&D. Thaat’s vision is to become a leading hub for research and innovation in the field of handicrafts. They aim to establish an interactive platform- connecting emerging designers & local artisans, initiating design driven community-based initiatives to contribute to the empowerment of the handicrafts industry hence generating sustainable income for local Artisans.

Jozour’s team collect, sort and shred agricultural waste produced by rural farming communities and process it, creating raw material for wood and paper factories. Jozour simultaneously create local jobs, recycle materials that would otherwise go to waste and provide raw material for an industry facing shortages.

Handicrafts

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Waste Management

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Newly Incubated Social Enterprises Nabd

Research and Development (R&D) Nabd, Masrena (NGO), aims to provide innovative solutions for problems facing Egyptian society. “Nabd” aims to create a “common interest” platform connecting different stakeholders who share the goal of enhancing R&D in Egypt. Through enhancing scientific research projects and Egyptian researchers’ standards, Nabd aims to help Egypt’s R&D sector achieve a respectable global status and play an active role in providing solutions for national problems.

Mini Medina

Alternative Education for Children A project for Egyptian children, by Egyptian children; Mini Medina started in October 2012 to create a city built by children in Egypt. In this city, children build the government; make laws, write the constitution, build the buildings and streets.

Children select their professions, adopting a role-play model, and run their city.

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Education Square

Social Networking Education Square is an online platform that profiles and connects NGOs, educational institutions and researchers working in the field of education in Egypt.

Education Square also holds offline discussions, film screenings and debates to bring the networking experience to life. The team’s vision is to be the primary source of information for educators working in education development and alternative education in Egypt.

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Newly Incubated Social Enterprises BioGas People Clean Technology

Initially starting off as community with a cause on Facebook, that consists of passionate individuals who believed in turning organic waste into a useful and viable product: cheap energy, the Biogas People quickly progressed.

The Biogas People moved their online presence offline, and continued on to prototype and implement on sites. Now, their social business works on building different kinds and sizes of digesters that can create energy and high-grade organic compost from organic waste material.

BioGas People co-operated with GIZ and icecairo to develop new, more efficient, designs for their product. Biogas People also worked with underprivileged communities building rooftop biogas digesters as a viable solution to the problems with access to natural gas and the waste disposal in these areas.

Arab Origami Center Art for Education

The Arab Origami Center (AOC) is a registered social business that aims to disseminate and develop the Art of Origami in the Arab World.

This is accomplished through the development of a local, regional and international network of Origami Artists as well as the fusion of Origami techniques in alternative education practices.

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Newly Incubated Social Enterprises Safarni

Alternative Education for Children Safarni brings the experience of traveling to children who otherwise could not. They believe in living, listening, dancing, tasting, playing and laughing as the most powerful uniting factors.

Twice a month, Safarni workshops take children on an imaginary journey to a new country, introducing them to the local language, food, games, dances and songs. They have the opportunity to meet people from this country, interact with them through play, dance, and sharing. These journeys open new doors in the children’s minds; encouraging respect for all human beings and cultures.

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The Paw Print Effect Animal Rights

Through creating an online platform and offline support groups, The Paw Print Effect aims to build a network of responsible animal caretakers. The PPE aims to establish a credible source for people looking for pet adoption, to help animal rescuers find a guide to animal rescuing and responsible vet clinics. The Team also ensures that the public awareness towards animal rights is spreading year by year.

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Featured Incubated Enterprises Nawaya Nawaya is a social enterprise that seeks to create sustainable farming systems and enable Egypt to co-create self reliant, bountiful and resilient communities. Nawaya has been busy in the past few months, from setting up its farmer's apprenticeship program to setting up the new Slow Food Cairo Convivium, to documenting uses of dates in its documentation project. So what does all this entail.

Our farmers apprenticeship program has just started, which meant town hall meetings in abusir to inform people about the project, assessments of the different potential candidates, interviews, final assessments of the land that we will begin our experimentation on.

We now have 11 apprentices that we are super excited to work with for the coming two years.

We have already completed one training cycle that has included four days for the identification of their training needs for the coming two years.

To ensure that within two years we will have cleaner and more sustainable farming methods, and they will have access to new markets for new "reefy"/rural products. So wait for the upcoming products that we will be launching that are cleaner, small scale farmer produced. Very soon there will be balady cheeses, balady chickens and ducks.... Keep a look out!

At the same time volunteers have been hailing to our experimentation plot on Fagnoon, to convert our 16 erat of land to a permaculture demonstration centre. So if you are free on sunday, tuesday, thursday or friday and want to get your hands dirty well contact aurelia on our Fb page.

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Featured Incubated Project As part of ensuring a strong network of good, clean and fair food, Nawaya has helped establish Slow Food Cairo Convivium (chapter) with diverse activities from events such as the Date Palm Festival that took place in Fagnoon in October.

This was a celebration of date palm products and the people who produce them. Slow food is a movement of foodies, farmers, chefs and all sorts of people who are interested to give value to indigenous Egyptian foods and agricultural products. We are accepting memberships at the moment.

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Stay in Touch

NM IS ACTIVE ON FACEBOOK & TWITTER

STAY UPDATED! -

Nahdet El Mahrousa

-

@NahdetMahrousa

www.nahdetelmahrousa.org Info@nahdetmasr.org Tel +202 23908083

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