For them, he or she lives in his own circle. This circle includes his or her family, hobbies, friends and all that he or she knows about life. But, what about the things he or she doesn't know about life?! "Why don't we get out of our circles and engage with other people, entering their circles and gaining more knowledge, in order to enhance our understanding of the world around us?" asks Lina el-Azzami, the media consultant of the ‘Dawayr' (Circles) project. Launched a one year ago, Dawayr aims to widen people's perspective on life. "Our idea involves engaging people in other circles. We don't want them just to be satisfied with their own small circles, but we want them to enter wider ones, in which they can acquire knowledge and familiarity with new cultures," she explains. Dawayr, a project invented by youth, is a big idea which consists of a many other ideas, as Lina puts it. "We want to offer people culture in a new, uncomplicated way. So we urge people to read books, discuss their thoughts and express their feelings. We don't bring in veteran intellectuals to give us lectures, as you can easily find that sort of stuff on TV, but rather, we, young people, talk to each other, discussing our opinions," she adds. Dawayr was launched in January 2012 and, throughout last year, the project, which has now launched an electronic magazine too, hosted many events. They have chosen the Sultan Hassan, the beautiful, massive Mamluk-era mosque located near the Citadel in Cairo, as the place where they, members and friends, gather every Saturday at 1pm. "Every week we suggest a topic on our Facebook page and ask people to join our next gathering in Sultan Hassan Mosque to discuss the topic," Lina explains, adding that they sit in a circle and the discussions are very free and open. "We have many such gatherings. At one of them, ‘Ketab Maftouh' [An Open Book], we suggest a book for everyone to read and then we discuss it together," she continues. Dawayr members, who want to reach more people, especially those who don't regularly use Facebook, thought of participating as volunteers in the Cairo International Book Fair, held in the Nasr City Fair Grounds, helping visitors find their way round. "Last year, we also volunteered at the fair, answering visitors' queries, telling them all about the fair, the books and the publishing houses that participated," Lina adds. This year, Dawayr rented a place and participated in the 44th Cairo International Book Fair [which ends today], entitled ‘Dialogue... not Clashes'. Twenty-five countries, including 17 from the Arab world, took part in the fair, while the guest of honour, Libya, hosted an elegant pavilion that includes a photo gallery of the victims of late leader Muammer Qaddafi. In a small section in the fair, Dawayr hung a large piece of paper on the wall, with the question ‘Have you ever lent a friend a book and he didn't return it? If so, tell us his/her name'. The answer was ‘yes' for many visitors to the fair, who eagerly wrote their friends' names on the paper. "Every day we changed the question to try to engage people with us," she adds. In the same partition, there were some shelves of books, with a notice pinned to them, saying ‘Donate your used book and take another for free'. "Sometimes you go to buy a book but it's too expensive. In this project, ‘Haat wa Khod' [Give and Take], we encourage people to swap their books," Lina explains. Although Dawayr started in Cairo, it has branches in 13 Egyptian governorates and three universities. It also has branches in countries like Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria, as well as in the Egyptian community in Canada.
