As a truth seeker Nawal has always been eager to know the “why” behind everything: Why is life the way it is? Why are people the way they are? Why is life is sometimes not fair? The urge to answer these questions led her to certain paths in life: education, entrepreneurship sustainability and social research. Therefore, while in college, she volunteered in student organizations and worked on education and research-related development projects. Her experiences have led her to the conclusion that she dreams of contributing to the community development sector as a development practitioner.
Aly Samara
Aly holds a BA in Social Work and has three years of experience in the development sector, focusing on issues related to protection, gender, research, monitoring, evaluation basis. In addition, he works on capacity building for volunteers to qualify them for developmental work, as well as writing a guide for different programs. He is able to find the connecting links that allow these areas to complement each other.
Noran Youness
Noran is a versatile dentist with diverse interests. She has been heavily involved in different volunteering activities as well as different sectors of development ever since middle school. Her inquisitiveness led her to get involved in projects related to the environment, climate change, health accessibility, health prevention & promotion, children and youth without parental care, emergency/disaster relief and education. Upon graduation, she discovered that she wants to fix more than teeth and that she is in her element when working on activities related to bettering our community. That is when she was awarded the Lazord Fellowship and started her professional work in public health. Noran is on a mission to help people, and to improve health accessibility and community development. She is always on the lookout for opportunities to sharpen her skills to be better equipped to serve vulnerable populations and underprivileged communities.
Manar Sawahel
Manar is a social worker, graduating in 2019 from the Faculty of Arts and Department of Sociology at Tanta University. She worked at Dawar on the Sexual and Reproductive Health Project by Image and Forum Theatre with OXFAM, and she worked for 3 years as a facilitator with children and adults on the Drosos Project at El Shehab Development in Ezbt El-Hagana.
She facilitated workshops part of a UN Women project to support refugee women at Dawar, facilitated many Theatre Kids workshops at Dawr Ezbt Kahrialla with the Dutch Embassy, facilitated workshops with homeless children on a project with Sawa Center for psychology consultations and the Relief and Emergency Foundation, and facilitated TOT for Care volunteers using Forum Theatre with communities .
She has been volunteering with local NGO’s and INGO’s such as UNICEF and Tdh since 2015.
She has a diploma in Community Action Method By Arts and a diploma in Forum Theatre from Dawar. She took participated in the Active Citizen program, and took a training workshop on Theatre Kids With Simon Di Yong at Dawar .
Manar is a member of the Medfest Festival Film team.
Mohamed Amin
Amin is a Renewable Energy Engineer who started his journey in the development sector in 2017, focusing first on youth empowerment, then widening his perspective to focus more on sustainable development.
Amin believes in the power of building communities either through networking, fostering collaborations, capacity building, or raising awareness. This is why while working at AUC, he focused on supporting local communities and building their capacities. He also worked on promoting solutions and raising awareness during COP27 when he was responsible for the AUC pavilion in the green zone.
In addition, Amin received a certificate to be a trainer in sustainable development from the National Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development.
Now, he is more focused on building collaborative communities in the business and entrepreneurship sectors through his work with ElRehla (The Journey).
Maram Nabil
Maram graduated from Alexandria University as an interior designer. She has always been fond of helping the community ever since her stay in the USA as an exchange student. Her passion inspired her to volunteer and work for local and international organizations in Spain, Poland and the United States while she was at university.
After getting her bachelor’s degree, she applied for the Lazord Fellowship to develop her experience in the community development sector. During the fellowship, she worked as a program officer for research and strategy projects with multiple INGOs such as GIZ, UNIDO and Plan. One of the most beneficial aspects of the program is the research component; she and her team wrote a research paper on, “Programs that Support Youth without Parental Care in Egypt.” The findings and the recommendations have inspired partner organizations to consider changing their programs and policies. Her team won the Lazord research competition in Egypt.
Currently, she works as a program assistant for the global initiative WISE at Ashoka Arab World. She is responsible for activities targeting Arab women social entrepreneurs in the region.
Along with her work experience, she also became a certified trainer for gender and civic engagement through Goethe Institute, and is an advocate for minority groups rights in the region by the MRG.
Nehal Attiya
The whole story about Nehal’s fondness for the development sector started with using handicrafts, colors and music in different artistic ways, leading to her passion towards informal education. Working with kids from different backgrounds and situations in Egypt and Italy showed her the importance of mental health for kids.
With the experience Nehal has in facilitating, researching, curriculum designing, and proposal writing, she started to wonder about more knowledge to enable her to connect artistic products of kids to their personalities, in order to understand more their psychological and emotional needs. This will help her develop a customized curriculum, and one day, achieve her life goal of creating an Art Therapy School.
She would like to deepen her knowledge in project management and explore more fields. Now she works in the social entrepreneurship field, a field she finds very interesting, rich, and inspiring. She believes that this will help her explore and deepen her overall knowledge and experiences.
Yousra Khalil
Yousra is a driven young development practitioner. She began her career as a translator, international and slum educator, and researcher during university. She was passionate about research, yet she always wanted to work on the ground and be closer to the beneficiaries, particularly when it came to providing education assistance to underprivileged communities. This became true after joining in the Lazord Fellowship. She not only gained new knowledge and abilities, but she also became involved in MEAL activities that allowed her to integrate her research abilities with her enthusiasm for field work.
On the personal level, Yousra is a cat rescuer, an enthusiast of Islamic heritage and architecture, interested in urbanism, and she presently plans to learn more about advocacy and activism.
Shaimaa Abdelrahman
Shaimaa is a young doctor with a great interest in the field of global health, especially regarding sexual and reproductive health and rights as well as gender equality. During her years in university, she engaged with the International Federation of Medical Students’ Associations (IFMSA) and held several positions including Program Coordinator on GBV and National Officer on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights including HIV & AIDs in Egypt. Through the Lazord Fellowship, she is currently placed at IOM Egypt, in the Health Unit.
“Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.” This quote literally changed Shaimaa’s life.
Areeg Badawy
Areeg graduated from Cairo University with a degree in veterinary medicine. However, she loves to identify herself as a social activist and an advocate for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals through working to enhance young people’s sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) and reducing the gender gap. Areeg is an experienced trainer in the field of peer education, SRHR, and gender. Her interest in the field of SRHR has grown through being a peer educator in Y-peer for 3 years, and serving now as a MEL officer in USAID-funded project OSRA.
If Areeg had a superpower, she would want to be able to plant diverse types of trees and crops in all deserted areas around the world.
