Draft article for the call for action - incomplete

hi all ,

here is my contribution for the article about Egypt .

What I had in mind that I can talk about 4 different not connected scenes in Egypt so as not to make the call for action seems to be limited to some target groups , I tried not to talk alot also in order not to make it big and boring .I only completed 2 scenes and the other 2 will be finished soon and for the arabic speakers on the site I wrote in egyptian arabic " ammia " in order to make it less formal do u think it 's ok or not please give me feedback about so we can all make a better final version --------------------------------

scene 1

If you are moving on the ring road in the area between "26 of july "and “Saft Ellaban” you will pass by Al Mu’tamidia exit ramp . This exit is a bit different than any other exit on the ring road as it is not done by the government , It is done by the people of Al Mu’tamidia during the 3 months of the collapse of the secuirty apparatus after Moubarak ouster.

To know the story from the begining  Al Mu’tamidia is like any other informal settlement in Cairo is cut off from the main road beside it and don’t have access to it and this leads to daily transportation problems but people always manage to find pop up solutions by building small stairs leading to the ring road where there is always “informal” microbuses stations.and this is accompanied by  more small interventions like tea stands ,coffee shops and car repair points.

People of Al Mu’tamidia needed to build this exit from a long time ago and when the chance opened for constructing it they took the chance during the  “temporary collapse of local authorities “.

That project is a huge project that costed 1 million egyptian pounds including 4 ramps like the official exits from the ring road  and people of Al Mu’tamidia contributed to it with effort money and expertise through a local community initiative called "Al Mu’tamidia baladna” which means “Al Mu’tamidia is our country” .They documented the process of construction in a video and after finishing the exit they invited the local authorities to come and inaugurate the exit.

That was a scene from a big scale urban intervention in Cairo which “we” knew about it from the amazing work of cluster , you can know more about these interventions and more in this publication which is the source of this story.

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scene 2

In the meantime in another place in Cairo -ELmaady-, Hany Elgamal was afraid that his sons would be lost in the “maze” of the educational system in Egypt. He found out that his kids spend a lot of time in school -from 6:30 to 16 :30 going from Elmaady to Eltagamo’ everyday and they come back exhausted with no energy or time to even study , do their homework and play and they became accustomed to have the easy answer for the questions and not to search for the answers themselves because obviously they have not time or energy to do so, this besides the fact that every day in school he is a sitting passively listening to teachers and the curriculum itself has lots of problems.

So Hany -with 2 kids ahmed in the 1st preparatory stage and karim in the 3rd primary stage- took a daring decision to quit school for his kids and start homeschooling.Of course the kids were over the moon with this decision and now it has been less than a year for them homeschooling and learning through the calvert school curriculum and this program you can take a test online and get a certificate so if the student wants to go back to other institutional education so it is a big risk for them but it is somehow a good calcuclated risk . Now Hany’s kids are homeschooling with the help of “Atef Rostom” -hany’s friend who is responsible for guiding and helping the kids and his daughter karima in their studies- and this gave them more time to play sports and interact with the “real world” more ,even Ahmed -Hany’s older son - is interested in mobile and computer apps and tries to see lectures and read about it and Hany is helping him by getting him access to a programming company where he tested some of their apps as a user and saw how the process of programming is done.

The Kids faced some problems at first about the change in the way of learning and mainly because of the english language level but they are improving in a good pace. The idea of homeschooling in Egypt -in the words of Hany- is scary for some people like the idea of revolution and for others they don’t have time to think for a solution for this problem because of the daily tiring work they do in order to make a living. but on the other hand there people interested in the idea and always asks how to do it. This was a another scene in the homeschooling community in Egypt which is growing and have different directions and systems

source :interview with Hany Elgamal

scene 3

In the heart of Islamic Cairo in Elgouria , you can find a place called CILAS “Cairo Institute of Libral Arts and Sciences” -– this part would be about the way of teaching/learning they adopted which is discussion based learning and how their connections with the community like the refeguee schools in Egypt and what was the obstacle faced in order to set up a libral arts school in egypt in the first place and what other obstacles they face now ---------------

scene 4

In the last year in his studies in the mechanical department in the faculty of Engineering ,Amr decided to quit school and continue with his start up company Simpion ---- this part would be about the problem that faces young entrepreneurs and the connection between university education with the work environment ----- and would end up with a general call for participation and sharing the stories with us -------------------

a side note I tried to make a small list of initiatives that we can invite to participate in the project and for Egyptians on the forum can you pleas add others :

  • ana moubasher , rsd , mosereen …on street journalism - receylopedia , Simpion , el maqar ,…,and other startups - eltahrir academy , alwan we awtar …for alternative education - BEE’iE , karmsolar , …environmental issues - harras map , and other anti harassment initiatives -tadamon ,nebny , AYB ,on urban issues and development projects -----------------------------

the arabic version of the 1st 2 scenes

لو انت ماشى على الدائرى فى المنطقه بين محور 26 يوليو و صفط اللبن ,حتعدى على نزله المعتمديه . النزله دى مختلفه عن باقى نزلات الدائرى ,دى مش الحكومه اللى عملاها دى اللى عملها اهالى منطقه المعتمديه فى التلات شهور اللى بعد سقوط مبارك اهالى المعتمديه انتهزوا فرصه انيهار الاجهزه الامنيه و عملوا نزله من على الطريق الدائرى .

المعتمديه زيها زى مناطق كتير غير رسميه مقطوعه عن الطريق السريع اللى جمبها وده بيسببلهم مشكله يوميه فى المواصلات بس الناس عموما دايما بيلاقوا حلول بسيطه للمشاكل دى زى بنا شويه سلالم بتودى لمحطات الميكروباص غير الرسميه و ده دايما بيبقى مصاحبه نصبه شاى ,قهوه ومحلات تصليح سيارات.

المشروع ده مش صغير دول 4 نزلات زى النزلات الرسميه كلف مليون جنيه و ساهم فيه اهالى المنطقه مع جمعيه المعتمديه بلدنا . مش بس كده دول سجلوا المشروع كله فى فيديو وبعتوا دعوه بيه للمحافظ و رئيس الشرطه لافتتاح النزله.

ده كان مشهد من التدخلات الغير رسميه فى العمران المصرى عرفنا عن طريق كلستر و ممكن تعرف اكتر عن طريق المطبوعه

دى اللى هى مصدر الرئيسى للقصه

المشهد التانى

فى نفس الوقت فى مكان اخر من القاهره هانى الجمل خاف على ولاده لايضيعوا فى متاهات التعليم . لقى المدارس بتقتل حاجات كتير فى الاولاد ,كل يوم من سته ونص لاربعه ونص فى المدرسه من المعادى للتجمع . الولد بيرجع معندوش طاقه ولا وقت انه يلعب ويحل الواجب و يذاكر وبقى ينموا فىه حته انه عايز الاجابه على الاسئله بسرعه بالمعلقه عشان معندوش لاوقت ولا طاقه انه يدور بنفسه على الاجابات , ده غير انه بيقعد طول الوقت فى المدرسه سلبى بيسمع بس مش بيعمل حاجه والمناهج نفسها فيها مشاكل كتيره جدا. هانى -عنده ولدين احمد فى اولى اعدادى وكريم فى تالته ابتدائى- اخد القرار انه يطلع ولاده من المدرسه ويعلمهم من البيت. طبعا الولاد كانوا فى منتهى السعاده بالقرار ده و دلوقتى بقالهم اقل من سنه بره المدرسه بيتعلموا عن طريق نظام امريكى calvert school ده بتمتحن اونلاين وبكده يطلع للولد شهاده لوحب يدخل مدرسه او يكمل فى التعليم النظامى. طبعا الكلام ده فى مخاطره بس محسوبه الى حد ما . دلوقتى الاولاد بيتعلموا وبيدورا بنفسهم وبمساعده “عاطف رستم” - صديق هانى وبيقوم بتعليم اولاد هانى وبنته كريمه -و بيديهم فرصه اكتر انهم يتمرنوا رياضه و يحتكوا بالناس اكتر وده مش ماثر على حياتهم الاجتماعيه بره المدرسه بالعكس الاولاد بيتطوروا على المستوى الانسانى اكتر بكتير مما كانوا فى المدرسه .دلوقتى الولد الكبير مهتم بالبرمجيات و بيحاول يقرا ويشوف محاضرات عنها و بيساعده هانى انه يروح شركه برمجيات يساعده فى تجريب البرامج كمستخدم ويشوف عمليه البرمجه بتتم ازاى.الاولاد قابلتهم بعض المشاكل فى الاول فى تغيير اسلوب الدراسه بسبب مستوى اللغه الانجليزيه بس بيتقدموا بسرعه كويسه . فكره التعليم من البيت على حد قول هانى فى ناس كتير طبعا خايفين زى الثوره كده او معندهمش وقت انهم يفكروا فى حل للمشكله نتيجه للساقيه اليوميه اللى هم ,على الجانب الاخر فى ناس كتير مهتمه تعرف اكتر و عايزه تعرف ازاى ممكن تعمل كده مع اولادها. ده كان احد المشاهد من مجتمع التعليم فى البيت فى مصر اللى بينموا كل شويه وفى اتجاهات مختلفه ونظم تانيه كتير

Wow. thank you Hazem! Im reading and thinking

Hmm can you copy the full urls in the page above? Then I’ll enable them as live links. We do this to keep out the spambots…

ping @selnadeem @gazbee sorour @amr

You know the scene in Egypt. Maybe you have some questions or input to help Hazem develop the stories/scenes further?  If you know of initiatives that you would like to discuss in private with me, just ping me directly.

Some ideas

Thanks Hazem! I like that you keep the stories short. And I liked the first story especially well. Although I would have liked to read at least briefly about more details, like: what was life like without access to the transportation route? How exactly did the idea occur to the people? Was there someone who first voiced it like: “hey, we got to do it!”? Were there any problems with execution, getting materials, etc? A good challenge makes a story always more interesting!

1 Like

working on it

thanks [Daniel Vaarik] for ur feedback

am working on it now

Hazem I would break it down into 3 separate posts

Because this makes it easier for people who know more about the intiatives to share their input on that one particular topic…maybe they know of more similar or related initiatives. Then you can weave them into an article.

Also this post is disappearing because there is too much practical project coordination speak happening in this group.

I’ve prepared three separate groups to move this and other conversations to: Making a living | We, the people | Caring for commons… Pick the one you feel it is most connected to, or break the post down into smaller posts to go into different groups. Today we start reaching out and inviting more people to join in.

bad internet connection

sorry I have problems with my connection it took longer than expected to be fixed …hopefully it will be fixed on monday

for the post I would break it down into the 3 different groups

another question , what about translating the content into arabic in the website , is someone working on them or not ?


for the home schooling Hany’s words when I asked him about isolating the kids was that he thinks that social life of school is overrated as most of the time they are in class and even in the lunch break because of the big no of students it’s not that good , some kids stay all the break time waiting to get to buy food , anyways he says actually interacting with people outside school is better and the kids have their friends from the sports training they do and from their neighbourhod .

for the organization of the learning process it varies from one group to another ,in this particular case one person is responsible for most of it , but in others as he told me some mothers are organizing the process.

Hazem

Re website translations: @Gazbee is working on the Arabic translations. I got them for the first page. Waiting for her to propose the others ones.

Re posts: The content is fine, I think it’s good that it is not “complete” because people can ask questions etc. Also if you have a photo or video for each post that would be great. Just add the url for them in the post and I can manually embed them into the post when you are done.

first 2 stories

okay I edited the first 2 stories and added links in text

will post them as 2 different posts in “we the people” as I think it is more appropriate to for this 2 stories than the other 2