CAIRO - It was a horrible experience for Salma when she was humiliated by another woman who rudely insulted her on a Metro train, merely because she'd asked a man to leave the women-only car. Salma, a young lady who usually uses the Metro to travel to her work every day, is not the kind of woman to remain passive and shut her mouth whenever she spots anyone misbehaving in public. One evening, she was travelling home by Metro after a long hard day at work, when she found a man in the women's car. She asked him politely to leave but he refused. Strangely, another woman started quarrelling with her instead of taking her side. Things like this are now happening every day, especially in the visible absence of the Metro security. Meanwhile, many youth movements have launched initiatives to try to deal with this problem. One such initiative is a campaign entitled, 'If you are a man then this is not your place', launched by the Tanweer (edification) movement. This, Tanweer's first campaign, calls for banning men from riding in the women-only cars on the Metro. They came up with this idea, when they realised that, although a lot of similar initiatives have been launched, many men still behaved in this uncivilised way. "There have been many such initiatives with beautiful slogans, but unfortunately they haven't been effective, so we have come up with something that can work," says Islam Saber, a 26-year-old accountant and one of Tanweer's founders. "We have designed a creative poster to put it inside the women's cars; such posters can do a lot without talking, as one look at the poster is enough to embarrass the man in this situation," he explains The poster is in the form of a cartoon of a man wearing a headscarf like a woman. Last February, Saber and four of his friends decided to found the Tanweer movement, with the aim of changing the things that are negative about Egyptian society, with the help of different campaigns and initiatives. “The idea hit us when we were sitting in the café as usual. We were thinking how, without resorting to politics, we could change our society and help achieve the goals of the 25th January Revolution," he says. Although Tanweer now has 150 members, it still needs more young people to join, so they can launch bigger campaigns that may in fact be concerned with political awareness. Every day on the Metro trains, Tanweer inevitably clashes with men and also with the vendors who sell goods inside the cars. "Many men tell us that they are men and here they are inside the cars. That's when the girls in our movement spring into action. We usually try to resolve these clashes calmly; at the end of the day violence is not our message," Sobhy stresses. Tanweer believe that, even if only two out of every ten men are convinced by the idea and stop behaving in this unpleasant way, then they have achieved something. The movement's next campaign, 'Defend Yourself', will target girls specifically. They will bring in a trainer who will teach the girls how to defend themselves whenever they get threatened in the street. The young members of Tanweer are also preparing for another huge campaign, 'Be a Human', that will include many initiatives for helping people. These initiatives will include cleaning the streets, encouraging people to dispose of their rubbish responsibly, as well as many other things, including defending girls whenever anyone sees them being harassed.
