Interview with Raghda El-Ebrashi, Founder of 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 Raghda El-Ebrashi, founder and chairperson of Alashanek Ya Balady Association, during her visit to Washington, D.C. in November 2008. Access the full transcript and audio excerpts below.
Audio Excerpts:
1. A Participatory Approach to Program Development (click to listen)
“We have two strategies actually, to make people participate in our programs. The first thing is we do a participatory appraisal, which means involving people in the design of the programs that we do. We don’t say that we are going to educate people and ‘we know what you need.’ ... No, we say to people that ‘you know more about your needs, and we are being educated by you to meet these needs through the programs.’ So they design the programs with us. And also I can say that, in the microfinance program for example, the savings scheme was introduced by one of the women who was receiving the microfinance. So we are open to ideas from the community.
“The second strategy, and I find it very interesting, [is that] in every program, we train the best youth, women and children to inherit the program so as to implement the program themselves. For example, the capacity building program, we train trainers. So we train the best people coming out of the program on how to conduct the sessions so they can progress with the program even if we are not there in the program anymore. So these are the two strategies [through which] we maintain peoples’ participation.”
2. Microcredit and Breaking “Out of the Circle of Poverty” (click to listen)
“In this program, we have 200 beneficiaries up until this moment, and actually we have an interesting part – and we are the first to introduce this in Egypt – which is ‘conditional cash transfers.’ The conditional cash transfer is … a cash transfer conditioned on the beneficiary actually taking the microloan from us, he or she is paying it back on time, he or she is spending on education and healthcare of their children, not all consumption goods. However, the microproject does not generate enough income to continue the expenditure on health and education services. So, we give them this cash transfer so as to get out of the circle of poverty. Because with loans, they would spend all that they have on education and health and just be in this vicious circle where all of the money they get, they put into the problems they have, like education, health and other things – because they have a lot of crises: they have crises every day – we want them to save. So we give them three grants: first is the education fund, the second is the marriage fund, and the third is the crisis fund.”
3. Engaging Students: Moving from Charity to Community Transformation (click to listen)
“I think I have to start first with the vision behind opening student clubs in universities. Alashanek Ya Balady started as a student club within the AUC and then franchised to other universities for a reason, not because we were just young and wanted to do something. The reason was we have around 20,000 NGOs in Egypt: around 25 percent work in community development, and I don’t know how many NGOs are active from the 25 percent. But, from being in the civil sector, I can say that there are not a lot of NGOs working in community development who are very active and [among whom] you can see their impact. This is in addition to the problem we have that around 60 percent of the Egyptian population are youth, so this is a great power, however most of the youth are not involved in community development. They might be involved in charity activities, like donating blood, donating blankets … but not involved in transformation of the society, and community development, and empowerment of other people. In 2002, if we thought of Alashanek Ya Balady like an NGO, it will be like any other NGO, and youth will … just think it is like any other NGO.
“So the vision was to invade the lives of youth, wherever they were. So we thought: ‘OK, we have to be there in the universities.’ And it happened to be that most of us were ‘AUC-ans,’ so the first branch was in AUC and then we franchised in other places, in other universities in Cairo. Hopefully, in sha’ allah, the next phase will be in governates. In 2005, three years later after the first branch in AUC, we opened [Alashanek Ya Balady] as an NGO. So, this was the vision.”
4. Gaining Credibility as a Youth Organization (click to listen)
“When we went to the community, it was not only me who was 18 years-old in 2002, it was other people as well who were 18 years-old, 17 and 16. So, you can imagine that I am talking to a general manager of a youth center who is 60 years-old and trying to convince him to [let us] work in the youth center. And also going to Umm al-Basma, who is one of the oldest women in the district, and trying to convince her to be a part of the program and to help us in the marketing. So she’s, like, 55 years-old. These kind of things, like: ‘who are you, child? You are trying to help us, but we have more knowledge than you … where are you coming from and what are your intentions?’ So, all this kind of stuff because of our age. It took us a while to build this trust with the community as well.
“And this also happened with the media. I can’t remember the first press release: the first press release I think was 2005 or 2006, because no one trusted a very young organization like ours. So yeah, these are the challenges. I can remember other things, but these are mainly the first few challenges that pop up in my mind.”
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