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 high-

potential 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.

About Nahdet El Mahrousa INSIDE THIS ISSUE:

Check out YIA celebrating 8

years of supporting innovative

youth with the presence of

leaders in R&D

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.

The first incubator for “early stage” youth-led social

enterprises in Egypt and the

region

Akhbar El Mahrousa October 2012, Issue No.9

Akhbar El Mahrousa P a g e | 2 OCTOBER, 2012

Outa Hamra Red Tomato performed “Transformers” in two different festivals in the past month, in Alexandria and in Cairo. BACK STREET FESTIVAL: On September 28th, a performance was done in the popular neighbourhood of Kom al-Dikka in Central Alexandria. There was high attendance, in a mixed audience of chidren and adults of the local community, as well as festival goers. (Pictures attached! Copyright Buthaina Shaalan) http://www.iact-eg.org/?q=content/backstreet-festival-2012 CIRCAIRO INTERNATIONAL CIRCUS FESTIVAL: On Saturday 20 October Red Tomato performed on the closing ceremony of CirCairo festival, along with troupes from Spain, England, Germany and Switzerland. An enthusiastic reception from a roughly 2000 strong audience made the event a

memorable evening for us. http://www.facebook.com/CirCairo2012?fref=ts http://english.ahram.org.eg/News/56155.aspx CAMP WITH STREET CHILDREN – Unicef Programme “Drama for Psyhological Well Being” Red Tomato spent four days (14-17 October) in Abu Talat (Alexandria) with 35 street children between 7 – 17 years, and 7 psycho social workers. During the days, a “street festival” performance was created with the children: a rhythm section;

dancers/acrobats; human sized puppets. The whole group will gather again in Cairo to perform the show in November (date still to be set). Info: Blog: http://outahamra.blogspot.com

Facebook:www.facebook.com/outa7amra

Newly Incubated Social Enterprises

Over the past 9 years NM has supported more than 40 social enterprises from across the Education & Employment,

Environment, Self-expression, Citizenship & Civic Engagement and Public Health fields that in turn have been impacting over

50,000 beneficiaries annually.

Akhbar El Mahrousa P a g e | 3 OCTOBER, 2012 rrrr

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 has been preparing underprivileged students for a new school year with their “Back to School Campaign”. Kherna.com featured and marketed for all the registered projects working to fund, bought supplies for, and created awareness around education in public schools across Egypt during the previous period. Kherna is currently heavily campaigning for “100 Days” Foundation, an organization that aims to collect the citizen needs from all around Egypt in 100 days, and accordingly, mobilize resources to address them. 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

The Incubator of Social Enterprises

Bosletak.com aims to unveil human potential through an online platform that helps Egyptian youth realize their potential and discover their appropriate educational and career paths. Ahmed El Noshokaty has been interviewed on the famous TV channel ONTV, in the program OnTube to talk about Bosletak, here's the link: http://bosletak.com/interviews/view/19?lang=ara. El Noshokaty has been interviewed on the famous TV channel ONTV, in the program OnTube to talk about Bosletak, their mission and their future plans. When asked about what young Egyptians need to fulfill their dreams, Noshkaty replied “passion and a determination to succeed”

For more information please visit: Youtube: www.youtube.com/Bosletak

Website: www.bosletak.com Email: info@bosletak.com

Facebook page: www.facebook.com/bosletak

Akhbar El Mahrousa P a g e | 4 OCTOBER, 2012

Nawaya (seed / intention) is a not-for-profit social enterprise that promotes sustainable agriculture. Nawaya shone, amongst 10 other environmental initiatives, at the Demena Recycling Festival that took place in Darb 17 18. Team members Sarah El Sayed, Betty Khoury and Adam Molyneux-Berry, made kitchen scraps fun by leading a workshop to teach the participants how to make homemade compost from organic waste. Those who participated in the workshop left with muddy hands and a newfound excitement for leftovers! For more information please visit: http://www.nawayaegypt.org Or watch a video on the project: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ADb5jiFqv4

HarassMap is a volunteer initiative that works to end social tolerance for sexual harassment through community outreach programs and internet- and sms-based reporting. Finally, HarassMap has an office! They now have access to co-working space at 22 Rasheed, Heliopolis that will act as their HQ for the time being. They also have good news from other parts of the world: groups in 17 new countries are adopting HarassMaps of their own too. For more information please visit: Website: www.harassmap.org Facebook: HarassMapEgypt/info Email: info@harassmap.org

Akhbar El Mahrousa P a g e | 5 OCTOBER, 2012

NABTA: Creating spaces to co-create solutions for social good

Nabta has partnered with Nawaya in "Bozoor Balady" campaign promoting the importance of local seeds and foods and sending a powerful message in Cairo and Alexandria through throwing seed balls in public gardens and talking to the people giving them awareness about the topic.

For more information please visit:

Website: www.nabta.me

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nabtame

Email: contact@nabta.me

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.

OTDI decided to invest in a website at a very early stage. Having a website

enabled them to become accessible to the online user which represents a

huge chunk of their preliminary audience. OTDI was able to interact with

them through many functions such as: registration for their scientific

programs, gathering and compiling digital data, and generally spreading

awareness about organ transplantation.

Info:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/otdi.eg/

Website: www.otdi.org

Akhbar El Mahrousa P a g e | 6 OCTOBER, 2012

GREEN ARM Eight Engineers from the Netherlands and Egypt spoke to a crowd of about sixty, including stakeholders from public authorities, academia, and the civil society, at the Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo on October 18th. The day-long seminar, titled "Cycling in Egypt?: Cycling as a Means of Transport", focused on biking and other forms of urban transport, with the goal of reducing traffic congestion in Cairo. The three speakers from the Netherlands gave presentations on the current state of biking in the Netherlands, how the requisite infrastructure and culture was developed, and what is being done to maintain and improve it now. The five speakers from Egypt spoke on the reality of biking in Egypt now, what problems need to be overcome to promote biking, and how these problems are being addressed. Afterwards, a panel discussion was held, where the audience summed up the main obstacles to widespread biking in Cairo. The two main obstacles discussed were sexual harassment and the perception of biking as a marker of low class. While engineering and urban planning can solve some of the problems bikers face in Cairo, the soft sciences are needed as well to study and improve the culture around biking.

This seminar was put on by The Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Egypt, the Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo (NVIC), and the Green Arm of Nahdet El-Mahrousa, three members of which gave presentations during the seminar. Info: Blog: http://greenarmegypt.wordpress.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GreenArm

Email: greenarm@nahdetmasr.org

Akhbar El Mahrousa P a g e | 7 OCTOBER, 2012

NM Partnerships

October was a very busy month for the E@W team. As part of the programme’s Capacity Building Plan for Local

Implementing Partners (LIPs), two workshops were successfully implemented by our technical advisor. The first workshop

covered pre-training necessary for project set-up, beneficiary outreach, targeting and selection. The second workshop

addressed training issues, challenges as well as adopting a competency based training approach. Furthermore, two of the

E@W team members attended IYF’s 4-day TOT on life skills tool; Passport to Success (PTS) in Jordan. PTS is a

comprehensive life-skills curricula that the E@W team intends to implement with the programme’s LIPs. Currently, the

vocational version of PTS has been adapted to the Egyptian context and the team is working on the professional one. On a

separate note, having signed their contracts, 3 new NGOs (Etijah, E-ERA and Youth Association of Population &

Development) have been added to the E@W LIP family. Moreover, the newly selected LIPs (Local Implementing Partners)

are currently receiving training on developing their own local labour market assessments. Finally, the team visited AYB’s

partners in El Behira. Not only did they manage to field monitor the mechanics trainings taking place there but also they

visited two of the newly established project by the E@W entrepreneurial beneficiaries.

Akhbar El Mahrousa P a g e | 8 OCTOBER, 2012

SALON EL Mahrousa

Voices of Egypt – 24 September 2012

Hisham El-Gamal

What happens when Egyptians from different political and religious TALK.

The workshop included Movie Night, screening short film Voices of Egypt followed by discussion and interview with Hisham Elgamal.

The workshop was over a full day where Egyptians from all backgrounds learned to listen and talk to each other in attempt to find in common grounds between different people.

New Hermopolis – 26 September 2012

Dr. Mervat Abdel Nasser

Dr. Abdel Nasser discussed the philosophical importance of heritage and how it can be linked to cultural, social and environmental development through her project, Hermopolis.

For more details please visit its website:

www.newhermopolis.org

Gebel Elba – 5 September 2012

Usama Ghazali

The Salon, in collaboration with Nature Conservation Egypt, discussed the importance of the Protectorate of Gebel Elba, its nature and rich biodiversity. Additionally, it shed light on its cultural heritage and the story of its local communities.

E-payment; Challenge or Opportunity? – 16 September 2012

Mr. Ahmed Faragallah

In a time where most businesses are growing and operating online, could Egypt be falling behind?

- When and how will e-payments and collections become more accessible?

- What are the current rules & regulations governing e-commerce?

- What are the pros and cons of the current legal framework? Does it support crowd funding?

- What are the laws that govern e-commerce in Egypt, and its safety?

…what are their implications?

Salon Snacks brought to you by:

Akhbar El Mahrousa P a g e | 9 OCTOBER, 2012

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Egyptians Who Make Us Proud

YIA Celebration

Under the title of “Economic Growth through innovation”, the Young Innovator Awards Program

celebrated last Monday at the “Oriental Hall” at the AUC old Campus, the success of some of the

winners throughout the 8 years of the program. The event was under the auspices of his Excellency

Dr. Amr Ezzat Salama and was attended by her Excellency Dr. Nadia Zakhary Minster of Scientific

Research, Dr. Maged El Sherbiny President of Academy of Science and Technology, Dr. Mohamed

Hamza head of cultural affairs department at the ministry of higher education and Dr. Sayed Tag

vice-president of the higher council of universities. The audience also included also a wide range of

audience varying between private sector companies, university professors and Media channels.

Prof. Dr. Ganat El Samaloty president of Sawiras foundation and Mr. Mohamed Hegab from

Monibil, YIA sponsors were among the prominent speakers .

The event speakers were very inspiring which enriched discussion about R&D in Egypt. Dr. Khaled

El Sherbiny head of R&D at “Crystal Asfour” talked about the economic value of innovation and its

impact on economic growth, Dr. Rana El-Kaliyouby co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of

MIT start up Affectiva, and Research Scientist at the MIT Media Lab shared her inspiring story

about women in the technology and entrepreneurship field. And finally, Mr. Hossam Allam,

President of the Cairo Angels investors explained the importance of investment in youth.

The highlight of the event was the Young Innovators pavilion showcasing 11 prototypes and

presentations of the best innovations from last year YIA competition, and 2

inspirational success stories videos. .