Host Organisation: Nahdet el Mahrousa
Location: Egypt
Context, aims, and initial thoughts on methodology and data:
Nahdet el Mahrousa (NM), meaning “Renaissance of Egypt”, is an innovative Egyptian civil society organization that seeks to make a positive and lasting impact on Egypt’s cultural, economic, and social development by activating and engaging young professionals. By leveraging the ideas and power of social innovation, NM engages social entrepreneurs to solve some of Egypt’s toughest development challenges.
Over the past eight years, NM has created an ecosystem to foster social entrepreneurship in
Egypt and to support the advancement, development, and scaling-up of social start-ups and enterprises in Egypt. NM’s flagship program, the “Incubator of Innovative Social Enterprises”, empowers high-potential social entrepreneurs to act as drivers of social innovation in Egypt.
The incubator identifies and supports social entrepreneurs by providing capacity-building, technical support, access to networks, and seed funding. Using NM’s innovative approaches and partnerships as a base, NM's social entrepreneurs build successful, scalable, and sustainable models addressing social issues in Egypt.
NM has identified seven social start-ups in need of support. Ideally, 5 students will undertake research to support these businesses with 2 students researching 2, and the rest researching 1 business each. The businesses cover a wide range of industries and sectors, they include; Red Tomato, a social development theatre group; Nawaya, an agricultural development organisation; CORD, a technology awareness raising group; HarassMap, a social initiative which uses new technologies for public safety; Bosletak, a technology pioneer and education organisation; and The Nile Project, which curate cross cultural collaborations among musicians in the Nile region.
Initial ideas on the type of report to be produced:
This particular project focuses on CORD and Bosletak.
Bosletak aims to discover the value and potential of human capital in the education field, particularly by identifying using innovative web-based tools strengths and talents of Egyptian students approaching higher education (university education). CORD , founded by Ashoka
Fellow Mohammed el Raffai, uses robotic learning tools for youth and young adults to raise technology awareness and help create a new Egyptian market which offers room for education and creativity through the sciences.
At this point, both projects have developed a variety of products which can be sold to markets young and old interested in learning. The teams need help in developing robust plans for sales and distribution; expansion plans for marketing the products outside Egypt — especially regionally —would be particularly useful.
Any additional requirements (e.g. specific skills the student should have)
The specific expertise of each individual depends on the needs delineated above. This position is appropriate to business school masters students though undergraduate students with significant appropriate experience may be considered.
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