At her office in Cairo, Karine Kamel is busy all day connecting corporates with their social responsibilities. Bridge Egypt is her brainchild. Registered as a limited company like most social businesses in Egypt, it provides corporate social responsibility advice to companies and communications services to raise the profile of social causes as well as non-profit initiatives. “I always felt I didn't entirely belong in the corporate world, or in that of development, and I was looking for the perfect opportunity. My inclination and passion to address social causes was clear in all of my previous jobs, such as when I introduced corporate social responsibility to clients when I was working in a PR agency in 2006 and then handled communications for a company developing low-income housing.” “My interest in social business grew tremendously, and though I had quite a few ideas I still thought they wouldn't be enough. I wanted to run a company that would allow many other social businesses to come to life, that would promote corporate social responsibility, and that would shed light on social causes. I did all this when I founded Bridge Egypt in April 2012,” she says. The company has already achieved a lot, for example by promoting Egyptian handicrafts as holiday gifts by corporates. Another outstanding social-marketing campaign has been Ekhtar (you choose). The campaign was commissioned by the Education for Employment Foundation to educate the public about unemployment and empower youth to change their behaviour and take ownership of their lives. “Through social media, on-site branding and a closing event at the Sakia Cultural Wheel in Cairo the campaign reached out to over 10,000 university students across Cairo,” Kamel added. During the curfew, Bridge Egypt managed to make a positive impact on society by targeting underprivileged children and promoting reading during curfew hours through book-swaps and a library collection donated to by different NGOs. So far, the library has gathered over 500 books and counting. Bridge Egypt has also launched an online magazine, BEcause, the first of it's kind in Egypt. The magazine contains information on social entrepreneurs, corporate social responsibility programmes, charities, and grassroots associations, aiming to connect all these together on one colourful platform.
