Interview with Student Leaders, Alashanek Ya Balady
The Alashanek Ya Balady Association for Sustainable Development is an Egyptian non-governmental organization that engages youth from different backgrounds in the comprehensive development of poor communities through various social, cultural, and economic projects.
To learn more about the program, MEYI interviewed Nada Hamada, programs head of Alashanek Ya Balady at the American University in Cairo and Imane Helmy, president of Alashanek Ya Balady at the German University of Cairo. Note: Nada and Imane were interviewed on a mobile phone. Due to the poor sound quality, we encourage readers to access the full transcript of their remarks below. We apologize for the inconvenience.
Audio Excerpts:
NADA HAMADA, AMERICAN UNIVERSITY IN CAIRO
1. Joining Alashanek Ya Balady (click to listen)
“How I got involved was through something called activities week. It is for two weeks at the beginning of each semester where we have a lot of booths for different clubs with different interests on campus, so you just go and see what the club is, its description, and if you want to be a part of it or not. When I first entered AUC I wanted to join a student activity, but I did not know what to join. So, first, [asks interviewer] do you know what ‘Alashanek Ya Balady’ means? It means: ‘for a better country,’…so the name itself is very attractive.[1] It’s very unique even now on campus because there are very few [clubs with] names which are in Arabic and ‘Alashanek Ya Balady’ is in slang Arabic, too – ‘for a better country’ – so it was attractive for me to go and see what they really do. So I went and I asked the guy: ‘what do you?’ I was very interested in the theme of community work, because I always wanted to do it, but I never found the appropriate umbrella to do it. So I just joined and I worked in public relations first on campus…”
2. Putting a Degree to Work (click to listen)
“I can’t describe one – to have my academic side, my academic education, it helped me a lot in Alashanek Ya Balady. So, whenever I deal with Alashanek Ya Balady, I deal with it as a service that I offer to consumers and my consumers are mainstream people…so I need to have marketing research, research and development, I need to go and see what are their preferences, what are their problems, what are the problems that I need to address through my services.
“So, my academic education has helped me a lot in Alashanek Ya Balady, especially because of the combination of marketing and psychology. Alashanek Ya Balady has also developed me a lot and taught me a lot about my personality: it taught me how to work with people, how to trust other people that they will do their work, it helped me to manage my time…it is a big group. It is not easy for a student to be involved in extra-curricular activities that require more than five hours per week, I have a lot of other things. So, it taught me a lot, and it made me part of a group of people that I want to be part of. When you work with people who have the same vision and you work with people who believe a different dream can happen, it is much different. Because a lot of people are so negative: even if they are in AUC [American University in Cairo] and they have a lot of resources and have a lot of things... When you work with people who believe in change, you yourself become more motivated to change.”
IMANE HELMY, GERMAN UNIVERSITY IN CAIRO
1. A Future in Egypt (click to listen)
“I may go to Germany or to another country in order to have a Master’s degree or a PhD degree. However, I can never live outside my country. Because I think that if I learn and I receive a lot of good education, I have to apply this education in my country in order to solve its problems, and not to just run away and say ‘I will leave Egypt. I will leave the economic problems and all of the problems that we have, because I would like to have a better life in another country.’”
2. Working Toward Sustainable Solutions (click to listen)
“I think that one of our competitive advantages is that we are not like a charity organization. Because here in Egypt we have a lot of charity organizations, but the competitive advantage of Alashanek Ya Balady is really that it is aiming for community development. We are not aiming at giving the poor just money, and at winter giving them clothes, and so on, and then leaving them, but we are aiming at community development – at helping the poor to self-employment, to do projects, to develop children, and a lot of things. So I think that people will be motivated toward our competitive advantage – that we are aiming at community development and helping the root of the problem, and not only having a short-term solution for this problem. [It] is a long-term solution which is not only charity and instant aid and so on, but we are aiming at a very, very long-term process, which is development.”
3. Microloans and the “Snowball Effect” (click to listen)
“We have had a lot of successful cases. I can remember one of them who had a project, and you know that [in the micro-credit program] we give them a loan and they have to repay this loan during, I think, eleven or twelve months. So, one day, one of my cases called me and she told me ‘OK, I took the loan for three months, and I know that I still have seven or eight months to pay. However, I would like to pay the rest of the money now in order to receive another loan and to have a bigger project.’ … I felt like we had had a very successful case. I can remember this woman, and I was really happy to see her enlarging a bigger project into a more successful project.”
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