CAIRO - It's time to build our country and it's time to live in love of Egypt. This is the message coming from the festival for volunteering associations, held earlier this week in Cairo. The festival, entitled ‘Build your country by volunteering', was organised by the Bedaya Team for Human Resources Development, launched in 2006. "After the revolution, it's time to build our country. We need to benefit from each other and work together for a better future for Egypt," said Noha Salama, a team leader in Bedaya, which in English means ‘Beginning'. The festival, in its third year, gathered around 100 volunteering associations, which shared their views and visions. They participated in an employment fair, presented by associations for helping women, children, orphans, old people and street children, and those engaged in charitable works. "The festival this year has a different flavour, especially after the revolution. We need to change ourselves, from inside," she told The Gazette. The five-hour event featured a number of successful new community initiatives, organised by volunteers. One of these initiatives involves working to eradicate political illiteracy in rural places in Egypt. This initiative was the brainchild of Fadi Ramzi, the editor of Egyptian daily magazine My Egypt. There is another initiative called ‘The Alley', thought up by professor of Fine Arts Ihab el-Toukhi, which is based on decorating an alley in the poor area of Dar el-Salam, southern Cairo. El-Toukhi believes that he can do something charitable with arts. He is trying with his team to tackle the problem of slums, by changing the inhabitants' way of thinking. His initiative relies on teaching people how to love Egypt, rather than trying to emigrate, which is often a very dangerous thing to do. At the event, well-known, experienced volunteers told the gathering of young people, new to volunteering, about their own successful experiences with volunteering. They included professor of engineering Sherif Abdel-Azeem, the founder of Resala, a charitable foundation, established in 1999. Resala, which means 'Message' in English, started as a student movement in the Faculty of Engineering, Cairo University. It was born of the desire of 60 students, encouraged by their professor, to try to develop their community. Their activities include donating blood and visiting old people's homes, orphanages and hospitals. The first big step for Resala was in 2000, when a father of a student donated it his land in the Faisal district in Giza. It was used to build the first branch of the Resala Foundation on. Today, Resala has more than 50 branches around Egypt, with around 200,000 volunteers engaged in more than 20 charitable activities. Abdul-Azim said that the culture of volunteering is not so common in Egypt for three reasons. "Firstly, we've only had democracy since the recent revolution; secondly, Egyptians need to learn how to work as a group; and thirdly, there is a general lack of social responsibility, which extends to volunteering," he explained. “In the US, about half of the adults do volunteering, an average of around five hours a week, compared to only 2.3 per cent of young Egyptians.” However, he added, the Egyptians can change and improve by “learning by training how to do institutional work”. “After the revolt, I think more people will start volunteering, doing good and helping others,” he said. For Abdel-Rahman Magdi, a volunteer, there is a problem that the charitable institutions haven't yet attracted young people. “Some institutions don't communicate or check up on their volunteers; some don't have kind relationship with their volunteers,” said Magdi, who volunteers for an institution called ‘A Family for Tomorrow'. He added that some volunteers give up if they're made to feel marginalised. Jeff Nobles, a US volunteer instructor who teaches English language in the ‘One Hand English Club', an Egyptian NGO, believes that volunteering is very rewarding. “I enjoy it so much. It gives me such a great feeling to help people in need,” said Nobles, who only came to Egypt in April. “No money can equal this feeling,” he added, while taking photos of the many booths and volunteers at the event. “It's wonderful to see these people here. I admire their enthusiasm for volunteering.”
