It all started four
years ago when religious tension started to appear on the streets of
Cairo. Christians started posting fish stickers on their cars, and
Muslims posting shark stickers. People interpreted the stickers in
different ways, nonetheless, it resembled religious intolerance and
discrimination. This is when the idea of the Misryiati project came
to mind by a group of young people to fight intolerance and violence.
Misryiati
is an incubated project under the well known and established
nongovernmental organization Nahdet El Mahrousa, co-founded by Ehab
Abdou. The organisation started in November 2002, to help young
Egyptian professionals assist in developing their country and shape
its future. This is done through:
Project incubators, where innovating developmental projects like
Misryiati, are incubated until they are independent
Forums, allowing for intellectual discussions and lectures to share
different opinions and viewpoints
Policy arm, where several partnerships focus on informing public
debate and policy in Egypt
Misryiati
was founded in January 2004 by a team of inspirational and active
young people, who were all members in Nahdet El Mahrousa. Their dream
was to make their society and community a better place to live in.
Since its initiation, it has conducted several activities, workshops
and programs aimed at “creating space where people can safely
explore concepts related to peaceful living.” Misryiati started
with six members and now there are up to 14 volunteering to make
Egypt a better place.
Misryiati not only focuses on creating
public awareness on intolerance in the society, but also creating
self awareness and understanding on how behavior and action can
change to benefit oneself and the society. “The main purpose of
Misriyati is to create personal transformation. “We work on the
human being to create self awareness and awareness on the social
reality, which will then help the individual transform his own
surrounding,” says co-founder Yasmine El Rifai.
According
to Ola Shahba, an active member, “we started by eliminating
religious intolerance, however, after we became more involved with
the community, we realized there are many different types of
intolerance in Egypt and one of the biggest was
class intolerance.”
The
first workshop Misryiati conducted was composed of a group of
participants, Muslims and Christians, from Manshiet Nasser and
Masaken Al Zilzal in Mokattam. “After this workshop, we decided we
need to explore more interactive and participatory methods,” says
Shahba, “so we thought of developing a
curriculum focusing on how to disseminate tolerance and create a
culture of nonviolence in the society or community we live in.”
Workshops conducted by Misryiati are open for children and youth from
different areas, classes and educational backgrounds. Participants
are usually recruited from NGOs, schools, universities and other
groups of youth willing to participate and contribute to changing and
improving the Egyptian community.
“Misriyati
uses non-formal education as the means to explore knowledge, skills
and values related to peaceful living. Through our interactive
curricula for children and youth, we hope to provide participants
with valuable learning experiences.” Misriyati’s activities
include, curriculum development, focusing on developing educational
and training material for children and youth in the field of peace
and non-violence education.
“We believe there are alternatives to violence and to the style of
living that leads to violence,” explains El Rifai, "also,
understanding how our personal and collective experiences shape our
choices and values, helps us understand diversity and where it comes
from." Creating awareness helps
people change their perception and through them, they change the
people around them.
Since
2004, Misryiati has developed around “six intensive workshops. One
long-term workshop, one teambuilding workshop, and several one-day
interventions related to peace education.” These workshops include,
Fatheit Kheir, Mokkatam (July 2004); a workshop on peace education,
Namaa School on Sustainable Development (July 2006); workshop on
social injustice and discrimination and Amideast LINK program (July
2006); workshop on diversity and nonviolence (August 2006).
“Alwan we Awtar,” an NGO in Mokattam, is engaged in an activity
called ‘Agents of Change.’ The main aim of this activity is to
help members become empowered and work on whatever they want in the
community and to be committed to the values of Misryiati, while
mobilizing the community, disseminating the value of tolerance and
the culture of nonviolence,” says Shahba.
Misryiati’s upcoming project includes a plan to develop the teams’
capacity through non-formal educational methodologies and other
interactive educational methods. “Using such methods is more
interactive, since it works on the awareness of the participants,”
says Shahba. An example is the use of “role playing.’ One
activity conducted by Misryiati focused on the awareness of social
injustice. Participants were given cards with different roles and
they were asked to stand all in one line. A participant may act as a
young woman with three children, divorced and living in a less
privileged community. Another participant is given a role of a Coptic
Egyptian who wants to become a judge; another is given a role of a
50-year old man who was fired after his company went through
downsizing; and another participant is playing a role of a privileged
young man, with a good education and a good paying job. Then the
facilitator of the activity announces certain state events, like “you
can afford to have a vacation once a year; afford to have a health
insurance; feel you are respected in the community and your voice is
heard.” Each participant whose statement applies to them will be
asked to make a step forward. Some participants may not take the
step, which leads to frustration and feelings of oppression.
After this activity, participants started to talk about how they feel
towards one another themselves. “Through this activity, we give
them a thought of what others are going through, and help them come
up with ideas on how to fight for their rights in the society and to
promote a culture of respect towards different classes,” explains
Shahba. There is a set flow in the way Misryiati organizes its
activities and that is through “awareness, choice and action,”
adds Shahba.
For every project or activity, members have to create an evaluation
technique to monitor the success factors of the workshop and
activity. “We had to work on the choices and action part to know
what we should do to change in the behavior aspect of the
participant,” explains Shahba, “we are now working on a better
evaluation technique to be able to assess the success of our workshop
and to what extent it helps in creating change and promoting the
values of Misryiati.
Misryiati is based on a set of values and principles that every
member has to agree on before participating. These include
demonstrating integrity, respecting diversity, striving peace,
freedom and having fun. “We believe that change should happen from
within, therefore, we do not get foreign funds; we depend on the
Egyptian society to be behind such change. We depend on 100% Egyptian
funding, help and aid!”
One of the tools Misryiati uses to get funds from, is through
creating products, such as publications, T-Shirts, notebooks,
calendars, etc… For example, Marwa Seoudi, a Nahdet El Mahroussa
member and talented photographer, has created a 2007 calendar, which
was sold to the benefit of the project. "This was a very
successful fundraising tool that generated a lot of money,” adds
Shahba, “We are currently in the designing and deciding process, as
we are trying to become financially independent.”
El Rifai believes that the best way to create change in society is to
“rethink education, and not only formal education, but all forms of
education, which starts with the way we relate and deal with
children; the way we help them solve their problems, the way we
expose them to violence, sometimes as a form of punishment."
