Akhbar El Mahrousa December 2012, Issue No.11 The first incubator for “early stage” youth-led social enterprises in Egypt and the region INSIDE THIS ISSUE:
About Nahdet El Mahrousa Nahdet el Mahrousa (NM), or “Renaissance of Egypt”, seeks to make a positive and lasting impact on Egypt’s cultural, economic, and social development by activating and engaging young Egyptians. NM’s flagship program, the “Incubator of Innovative Social Enterprises”, leverages the ideas of highpotential changemakers and empowers them to act as drivers of social innovation in Egypt. Since its founding in 2003, 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 is an Egyptian NGO registered with the Ministry of Social Solidarity.
Nahdet el Mahrousa (NM) leverages the ideas and power of social innovators to tackle Egypt's toughest challenges. By activating and engaging young professionals, we make a positive and lasting impact on Egypt’s social, cultural, and economic development and help Egyptians take ownership of their country.
Discover what newly incubated Outa Hamara and Nile Project have been up to on pages 2
Get updates from inside the Incubator on page 3 -
Find out about NM ‘s Partnership: Egypt@Work and CEDO National Program Management Unit (NPMU) on page 7 Read about Egyptians who make us proud on page 8
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Newly Incubated Social Enterprises Over the past 8 years NM has supported more than 40 social enterprises from across the Education & Employment, Environment, Self-expression, Citizenship & Civic Engagement and Public Health fields and that in turn have been impacting over 50,000 beneficiaries annually. .
Outa Hamra Red Tomato is one of NM’s newest protégés. It seeks to create drama and culture practices and implement them in a way that helps marginalized Egyptian communities learn new things and express their views on different things. The program wants to help improve their lives with these opportunities, through performances – clown specifically – drama workshops, capacity building, cultural exchange as well as critical thinking skills, reflection and self-expression. In December, OH conducted ongoing workshops with Street children in the UNICEF project “Drama for the Psychological well being of children in a Street Situation.” Additionally, it started the One day “Office clowning” program for the staff of Unicef, using the office premises, and improvising in the everyday working environment. Outa Hamra’s activities were prominently mentioned in Theatre Critic Nehad Selaiha’s Ahram Weekly article summing up the theatre year of 2012: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/News/815/23/Swimming-against-the-tide.aspx “Lazim Masrah (Theater is a MUST), was launched on 4 March … by The Movement of Arab Theatre Artists at several sites in Alexandria, lasting until 4 April, and featured mid-day street performances by a magnificent troupe of street clowns called Outa Hamra (Red Tomatoes) and a number of productions of the “Egyptian-Theater-of- the-Oppressed-Project” workshop” “Teatro Eskendria’s Backstreet Festival: Towards Art in Non-Traditional Spaces – a oneweek, multi-venued Euro-Mediterranean forum/festival for independent artists and theatre troupes, launched on 23 September. … Here again, as in the earlier Lazim Masrah event, Hany Taher and his irrepressible Outa Hamra clowns brought joy and colour into one of the poorest and most deprived areas of the city.” Info: Blog: http://outahamra.blogspot.com Facebook:www.facebook.com/outa7amra
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NILE PROJECT The Nile Project is a new initiative with a mission to inspire, educate, and empower Nile citizens to work together to foster the sustainability of their river ecosystem. Through an innovative approach combining music, informal education, and an enterprise platform, the project seeks to address the cultural and environmental challenges at the root of the Nile basin’s problems An invitation to participate in the Nile Project 2013 program has been sent out to entrepreneurs, innovators and leaders working in fields of relevance to the Nile Project to apply to attend the workshop. Potential participants should RIVER BASIN show an interest to dialogue and collaborate on addressing issues that cut across the social, cultural, environmental and economic challenges applicable to the Nile. Participants should come from countries on the River Nile Basin: Burundi, Egypt, Eritrea, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania, Congo DRC, Ethiopia, Kenya, S.Sudan, Uganda. Fekra Cultural Center was chosen as a venue and it’s located in Aswan, Egypt. Situated on a Nile cove directly across from the Philae Island - home of the iconic Temple of Isis - Fekra provides direct access to the ecological diversity of Aswan, the historical significance of Ancient Egypt, and the cultural richness of Nubia. www.fekraculture.com The project seeks to address the cultural and environmental challenges at the root of the Nile basin’s problems through different methods such as: Cross-cultural Music collaborations, Learning Activities, and The Nile Enterprise Platform. The Nile Project Team's approach is inspired by two sets of methodologies, the U-process, developed by practitioners at MIT, and the Art of Hosting developed by a global network of dialogue facilitators. Both approaches bring together a wide variety of collaboration methods that have their roots in design thinking, multi-stakeholder dialogue, organizational learning and social innovation. The Nile Project is partnering with a team of facilitators whose specialty is to engage participants in defining the content and outcomes of highly participatory workshops. The team believes that music offers a wealth of models that can inform our search for new ways to organize ourselves around the Nile basin. During this kick-off workshop, Nile Project musicians will illustrate some of the ways in which these musical collaboration methodologies can help us engage in more constructive dialogues. Workshop participants will also support Nile Project musicians in translating complex environmental truths into compelling stories and songs. To know more about the Nile Project, you can listen to their Nile FM interview on the Nile FM AWARE show on this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFxae6yQggE
Info: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nileproject website: www.nileproject.com
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The Incubator of Social Enterprises Kherna.com is an online social platform for all good-cause organizations and individuals to communicate and keep track of all the new initiatives and activities. Kherna spent the month of December spreading awareness about the circumstances of the underprivileged during the winter period and encouraging efforts towards keeping them warm through advertising NGOs’ efforts on their website and social networks. Info: Website: http://www.kherna.com E-Mail: info@kherna.com Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/Kherna Twitter: @KhernaME Blog: http://www.blog.kherna.com
OTDI is an organization launched by Medical Students and fresh graduates to the Egyptian population planning to take the lead and change the already present misconceptions and misinformation and to promote/ advocate for legal organ donation. After one year in the making, the team is finally ready to launch OTDI's research program LABify. It is a 3 month program, in which four medical students will have the opportunity to learn more about research methodology, work in some of the most interesting labs in Cairo and take part in a full internship at a transplant center. The students will be able to engage hands-on in new health technologies such genetics, regenerative medicine and In Vitro Fertilization, while attending Liver and Kidney transplant surgeries. Participants are from Cairo, AinShams and Assiut Universities. The program is managed by OTDI's Research Director Magie El Manshy. Magie has graduated from Boston University with a B.Sc in Biomedical Engineering, and she currently works as a bioinformatics researcher at the Children's Cancer Hospital Egypt, 57357. OTDI is proud to announce the launch of LABify, and the team is looking forward to their post-LABify Seminar in March. Info: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/otdi.eg/
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The Misriyati program focuses on promoting the values of tolerance, peace and diversity among young Egyptians through an innovative curriculum. The project has an established curriculum and teaching methodology. At the end of each cycle of workshops, participants are requested to brainstorm on means of contributing to their communities. Responding to Misriyati's call for Training of trainers, 72 applications have been received from a very diverse group of interested participants. Misriyati could only accept 20 out of the 72 applications, with relative experiences to peace, social responsibilities and facilitating workshops. The main purpose of the TOT is to recruit and qualify new trainers in Misriyati team but many applicants will use the knowledge to start new peace building workshops in their NGOs or initiatives. Additionally, Misriyati recieved several training offers for the coming months: Sadat Association, General Secretariat for Catholic Schools, Care with Love NGO, and pending cooperation with Madad company on a GIZ project.
HarassMap is a volunteer initiative that works to end social tolerance for sexual harassment through community outreach programs and internet- and smsbased reporting. Harassmap community outreach continues its mission to put an end to the social acceptability of sexual harassment. New neighborhoods in and outside of Cairo have joined the team! We now have new teams in Mansheyet Nasser, 6th of October City and Fayoum. We updated our 2013 community outreach plan to increase the frequency of campaigns with the provision of training material, monitoring and evaluation. For more information please visit: Website: www.harassmap.org Facebook: HarassMapEgypt/info Email: info@harassmap.org
Green Arm The Green Arm is a platform for youth-led environmental initiatives in Egypt that address environmental problems of the urban community and promotes green living. In December, Green Arm, in partnership with Salon El Mahrousa, offered the exciting opportunity to present Claude Marthaler, the Swiss Cyclonaut who spent over 15 years cycling around the planet and share his travelling experience with the enthusiastic audience. The Swiss cyclonaut Claude Marthaler, born in Geneva in 1960, and his biggest accomplishment has been a 7 years world tour (1994-2001, 122.000 km, 60 countries). Claude is author of 6 books in French, of which some has been translated into German and Italian. While cycling through Egypt in 2006, Marthaler discovered the unique cyclist-breadmen of Cairo and published 'Riding with the Breadmen' in VeloVision mag. Today, he is back in Cairo with RaphaĂŤl Jochaud, a french cameraman, to shoot a 26' documentary about Hamada, a cyclist-breadman. Info: Website: http://greenarmegypt.wordpress.com/ Email: greenarm@nahdetmasr.org Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/GreenArm
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Nawaya (seed / intention) is a not-for-profit social enterprise that promotes sustainable agriculture. Nawaya participated in the organization of a 2 day Earthbag-building workshop on how to build structures using bags of sand. This eventful workshop was held at Fagnoon Art School in collaboration with EECA, icecairo and supported by GIZ. Nawaya in collaboration with ice cairo and GIZ has also hosted its first “unconference� in Azhar Park where it brought together the people who are doing amazing social and sustainable technology projects on the ground to share experiences. In the month of February, Nawaya will facilitate the first International Permaculture course offered by certified permaculture experts Rod Everett and Mill Millichap. This Permaculture Design Course is a 72 hour intensive hands-on course that equips the participants to learn and practice how to design their land and life using permaculture principals. If you would like to join this course, please contact Sara El Sayed on this email Sara@nawayaegypt.org For more information please visit: http://www.nawayaegypt.org Or watch a video on the project: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ADb5jiFqv4
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NM Partnerships
For Egypt@work, the Passport to Success (PTS) TOT was December’s highlight. The 4-day training was held in sunny Hurghada and coached by two of IYF’s Jordanian PTS master trainers. 8 out of the programme’s 9 Local Implementing Partners (LIPs) participated through sending their respective life-skills trainers and project directors. Throughout the training, participants were introduced to the PTS training methodology, curricula and various interactive workshops. Furthermore, participants were given the opportunity to practically implement some of PTS’s lessons in preparation for their adoption as part of their E@W projects. More importantly, E@W LIPs were given the chance to overview and provide feedback on the adapted Egyptian version of PTS. On a separate note, during this month two of E@W LIPs; ASBA and New Horizon, received their second capacity building workshop focusing on training activities. Also, field work for our target LIP’s market assessment was conducted in preparation for their report next month. The E@W team plans on holding their second Advisory Committee meeting next month during which they intend to invite some of their LIPs and introduce them to the AC members.
CEDO National Program Management Unit (NPMU) The CEDO National Program will serve as the national umbrella for all Career Entrepreneurship & Development Offices in Egypt. It will also serve as a hub for different resources that are to be shared among the different CEDOs to fill the dire need to bridge the gap between education and employment. In December, NPMU hosted its first Tamheed training which will allow all CEDOs to provide their beneficiaries with an additional service: Career Guidance. This means that all CEDOs will have trained and qualified career advisors that will help young people and job-seekers map their career paths and make calculated choices regarding education, training and job opportunities. This will be based on their natural aptitudes, abilities and motivation which are measured using Tamheed assessments. Tamheed is a flagship initiative of Silatech, which entails a program of online psychometric assessments specifically designed for career guidance.
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Egyptians Who Make Us Proud r
Dr. Mervat Abdel Nasser MD, Mphil, FRCPsych Consultant Psychiatrist, researcher in Egyptology and writer, NM Friend Founder of New Hermpolis, Tuna the Mountain, Malawi, Minya When Dr. Mervat founded Hermpolis, her vision was to provide a model of development for Egypt showing how heritage can be used to build both man and society through providing economic opportunities to underprivileged pockets of Egyptian society and creating a space to nurture individual potential through personal development, education and skill training. She is a graduate of Cairo Medical School and fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, London. She holds a Master’s degree in Philosophy and a doctorate in psychiatry from London University. She also has two diplomas in moral philosophy and the history of medicine. She has as well a long-standing interest in Egyptology and has written several books in Arabic addressed to the young reader, including a 40-part illustrated series that won an award for best children writing in 1998. She took an early retirement from her job as a consultant psychiatrist and senior lecturer at Kings College London in 2007 and returned to Egypt to pursue her dream of establishing the project of New Hermopolis. Since 2007, Dr Mervat has dedicated herself entirely to establishing and developing New Hermpolis. .