Egypt is the land of civil society, and from the 19th century onwards Egyptians have taken their social responsibilities very seriously. Now boasting over 20,000 non-governmental organisations (NGOs), the country has a wealth of non-profit initiatives that have helped the lives of millions. Among the latest of these initiatives is Bassita (Simple), an Egyptian social enterprise that has created an innovative model called “click-funding.” The idea came to founders Salem Masalha and Alban de Ménonville when they saw “a lot of development and non-governmental causes that are doing a great job but do not have the means to communicate efficiently. On the other hand, there are NGOs with great proposals that sometimes do not have the capacity to implement them,” explained Masalha, the French-Egyptian co-founder, to Al-Ahram Weekly. Bassita's mission is to create a virtual model for fundraising and philanthropy that utilises the rich diversity of online platforms to connect development causes to sponsors through videos. Starting with a selection of social or environmental causes that need help, the Bassita team creates a short video to highlight the issue and circulates it to private companies that could be willing to finance the cause. “As soon as a company agrees to help, the video is launched online on the bassita.org Website. If the video reaches its targeted number of points (calculated on views, likes, shares, tweets and comments), the sponsor will allocate the amount needed to fulfill the goal,” Masalha said. This “click-funding model” is the first of its kind and was awarded the Nahdet Al-Mahrousa Young Innovators Award in 2013. Connecting companies having corporate social responsibility with the right social causes is a flourishing trend, and there are numerous young initiatives going in the same direction. One of the key figures is Bridges Egypt (BE), a limited company for social businesses in Egypt that provides corporate social responsibility advice to companies and communications services to raise the profile of social causes as well as non-profit initiatives. BE also created Egypt's first online social cause magazine, BEcause, and it hosts information on social entrepreneurs, corporate social responsibility programmes, charities, and grassroots associations, aiming to connect all these together on one colourful platform. Bassita's line-up includes providing 1,000 pairs of glasses for embroiderers and toys for children with cancer. Its first video, to be launched in mid-August, will help “click-fund” material for children in Manshiet Nasser, an underprivileged neighbourhood of Cairo. “We have three winners: the first is the cause, the second is the sponsor because he is doing good, and the third is the Web user,” Masalha concluded.
