Our initiative Noat Nour is incubated by Nahdet El Mahrousa, a local NGO in Cairo. We will facilitate " the Oasis Game" an asset based community development methodology to affect social change.
The methodology is FAST (one week to 10 days), FAN (very positive and engages everyone in joyful way and we long for this now in Egypt), FREE (we should mostly depend on the communities resources and talent with minimal help from outside the community to realise a common dream), and the result
should be FANTASTIC!!
We work on three axes: Socio - Cultural, Socio - Environmental and Socio - Economic. The team is comes from different disciplines and has different interests. I am focussing on the socio - economic axe and the creation of a seed of cooperatives in communities, mainly women cooperatives. Others are interested in Eco - building, composting, reusing materials, building playgrounds, alternative learning, etc.
During all the discussions, I felt we could form teams and work together or help each others in a way or another. Help could be as simple as listening to the other person and help him organise his thoughts, or even share knowledge, talents and network.
I am looking forward to learn more about Edgeryders and how collaboration happens between people through your platforms.
Thank you…
Dina
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Asset-based?
Hello @amiridina, welcome. Interesting that you talk about asset-based. We are moving just now planning a move into what we call stewardship, the act of communities taking care of assets and deploying them for the common good. There are plenty of unused or under-utilized assets littering the landscape (at least in Europe, I am unsure about Egypt). We are making a significant experience with the unMonastery: the building belongs to the Italian city of Matera, but no one was using it. Now it is being used for many things, from open technology teaching to playing with children.
As for the platform, there is nothing special about it. It is simply a way for us to stay in touch, since we live all over the world. We have also discovered that this way of communicating, preferably in writing, encourages clarity (because we need to think hard about what we do in order to communicate it in writing) and discovery (because once it is written it is there, and somebody might be inspired today by something you did and documented two years ago). I am convinced that this culture of documenting things we do (largely derived from open source hackers) makes us more effective asa community of doers.
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unmonastery
Ciao @Alberto,
Thank you so much for your message. The purpose of me attending Edgeryders workshop was actually to learn more about what is going on in the Unmonstery. I wanted to hear your story? Who are you? How did you decide to use the space? Did you have to get approvals from the city? How did the community receive you? How about the men of God? The responsible of preserving the building? There are plenty of unused assets everywhere, yet the types and conditions of the assets might differ based on the wealth of the country. We reuse lots of materials in our houses and we produce lots of waste, etc.
How could I learn more about the different initiatives that you are taking and how can we share experiences?
Best regards,
Dina
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More, and yet more…
Hello again, @amiridina. The story of the unMonastery goes back nearly two years now. Here is a post written one year ago that has some of the answers you seek. At that time we have moved from concept to project; we had a partner, the Italian city of Matera; and the unMonasterians has visited the city for the first time, and started to meet the local people to identify the challenges the unMonastery would work on. It took the best part of another year before the actual residency could start: people have been living and working out of unMonastery Matera since February 1st 2014.
There are probably other ways to start an unMonastery. I am keen on this one, because the city was not only giving us a (spectacular) building: it was also giving unMonasterians a social role as the hackers-in-residence. And hack they do… and on the side, they try to engage with the local community and have good relations with them. For example, here’s some of them playing with Materan children on unMonastery’s Family Day. 
Let me know if you want to know more… or even better, go here and introduce yourself. Most people in the unMonastery hang out there and will be happy to meet you.
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