Challenges Worldwide
Project Proposal
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 HarassMap.
HarassMap is a new social initiative that will help restore Egypt’s tradition of public safety for
women using cellular-based reporting systems for sexual harassment to change its social
acceptability, spread awareness, and revitalize the public movement.
The organisation faces a significant struggle when it comes to changing mind-sets of
individuals, and convincing them to desist from harassment. Learned behaviours and
stereotypes have proven extremely challenging to amend. HarassMap could benefit from
robust research that reveals strategies on inducing internal change—on an individual level,
as well as a larger cultural and societal level—and what methods, practices, and tools are
most effective.
Any additional requirements (e.g. specific skills the student should have)
The specific expertise of each individual depends on the needs delineated above. This
project is particularly appropriate to students of the social sciences, particularly psychology.
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