Mohamed Youssef

Mohamed is a dedicated Multipotentialite Engineer from Qena in Upper Egypt, driven by his passion for the environment, renewable energy, and green business. With a bachelor’s degree in mechanical Power and Energy Engineering from South Valley University, Mohamed possesses a strong educational foundation. He has actively pursued various programs and projects to enhance his personal and professional skills.

Currently, Mohamed serves as an Environmental Specialist at The Regional Center for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency (RCREEE), where he contributes to different projects focused on Environmental sustainability, waste management, energy efficiency, and renewable energy. Mohamed’s entrepreneurial spirit shines through his achievements.

As the Founder and Director of Electrobekia, the first start-up company for E-waste Recycling in Upper Egypt, he secured funding through AUC Venture Lab & TIEC. By formulating strategic partnerships with universities, factories, organizations, and companies, Mohamed raised awareness about E-waste challenges and other environmental issues. Mohamed’s unwavering commitment to the environment, coupled with his entrepreneurial spirit and dedication to capacity building and sustainable development, positions him as a valuable Lazord Alumni, working tirelessly towards a greener and more inclusive world.

Ahlam Gamal

Ahlam has a B.A. in Fine Arts from the Graphic Department/Animation and Book Art. She is interested in culture and arts and their role in societal change as the primary drivers for expressing ideas and needs. She strongly believes in the role of the arts in developing societies in a way that includes and allows all individuals to be honest, equal, open and confident in themselves and in others.

Through the Lazord Fellowship she works as a cultural coordinator with Collective Routes. Her role is to provide support for the implementation of projects and support in planning, monitoring and evaluating project activities, providing visual content for various tools and researches, and working on developing cultural work and making it available to the community.

She was the program coordinator for community empowerment at Ruwwad, which works to empower young people through their learning journeys and enhances their role in community participation and services. Her role was to design educational processes for women in eradicating illiteracy, promoting free education, empowerment, and awareness of their issues.

She is on the national team of ambassadors of National Dialogue Egypt, which works to promote a culture of dialogue and peaceful coexistence, as they believe that dialogue is a type of art people use to express their ideas to reach solutions and ideas on how to develop society without excluding any of its members.

She also works on documenting the oral heritage of marginalized areas in order to revive them as an important part of the country’s culture in that they give us events from the point of view of people from the street where they differ or agree with the reliable historical vision of historians. She created a website to document the oral literature of one of the slums in Egypt. Also, her graduation project was an illustrated story of an Egyptian folk story of a young Egyptian hero “Ali Al-Zeibaq”.

She was a co-founder in establishing a cinema space in the Old Cairo area to raise awareness of gender, using cinema with the Art Association for Development. Among the Fael Cultural Program, which works at the regional level to spread culture and arts in complex societies, from the “Action for Hope” organization, she believes that culture and the arts have an effective role in spreading coexistence among members of society, as well as the need for cultural relief for youth and children in various regions, especially marginalized areas.

Nadine Ellaban

Nadine is a passionate individual in the development field. Nadine started her journey with the development field when she was granted an exchange program scholarship under the name of KL-YES program. Nadine was placed in the state of Massachusetts in the United States where she started volunteering and engaging with the society in which she lived. Moreover, Nadine was chosen for the Civic Education Workshop held in Washington D.C. At the end of her exchange program, Nadine was granted a certificate from the department of state as a reward for volunteering for more than 100 hours during her exchange year. After Nadine returned to Egypt, she completed her undergraduate studies in political science.

At the heels of earning a BSc in Political Science and completing a thesis for women empowerment, Nadine was granted the Lazord Fellowship and is currently placed at GIZ Egypt in the Employment Promotion Unit. Nadine aspires to be part of empowering the women of Egypt and enhancing the quality of education inside Egypt.

If she had a superpower, she would want it to be the ability to end poverty in order to make the world a better place.

Ahmed Tag M.

Tag is a filmmaker, visual artist, and film impact producer. He is passionate about freedom of expression, intercultural dialogue, and art democratization for social change. Tag is motivated by his passion for civic engagement, intercultural dialogue, the arts, and filmmaking. He decided to apply to the Lazord Fellowship because of his strong belief in arts and culture as a method for social change. Ahmed was particularly engaged during college, writing, and translating several published articles on the social and political situation in Egypt and globally. He also volunteered and participated in many civic engagement projects and exchange programs in Egypt and abroad. Ahmed is an art enthusiast who is passionate about photography, videography, creative writing, and storytelling. Since 2017, he has written, filmed, edited, and directed several short films that have been submitted to film festivals, winning awards in Egypt and internationally.

Yousef Hesham

Yousef is a change leader with over seven years of experience working at the intersection of youth engagement, economic empowerment, and inclusiveness. His social development adventure began at the age of 18 when he cofounded the VIA Club, with the goal of bridging the gap between student competencies and labour market demand supporting 4,500+ university students. He wore multiple hats, working in business development, project management, and research for a variety of INGOs and consultancies. He currently works at Ashoka as a Regional Fellowship Assistant, empowering civic organizations in the Arab region. Additionally, he is the founder of ZShapers, an initiative to empower young leaders in the civic sector. Yousef was selected in 2020 to represent Egypt in SWY under the auspices of the Japanese Cabinet Office, is a member of the World Economic Forum’s community “Global Shapers”, and is the curator of the GIZA hub for the year 22/23.

Yousef has a BSc in Business Administration from Cairo University.

Merna Yossif

Merna is an activist in child protection. She has an outstanding passion for gender and women’s rights and children’s mental health, with four years of experience in this field. She is skilled in workshops facilitation, case management, and psychosocial support.

Merna has a strong education background with a pre-master degree in psychology studies. Her current thesis is about self, identity, and body image for adolescent girls.

Ali Hisham

Ali Hisham is an innovative writer with 10 years of experience. He began publishing his writings in print newspapers in 2010. He published his first book Naql Aam with four editions that hit the bestseller shelves, while being the youngest story writer in Egypt. Hisham is currently in the process of publishing his second book. He is also an E-blogger whose blog, www.kobbaya.com, has reached more than 200K views. In December 2011 Hisham co-founded a grassroots movement in Egypt, Thawra Ma’hash Beta’a (Revolution Without an ID), that focused on students’ rights and worked on discovering children’s talents. He was selected by Amnesty International Nederland as Egypt’s Country Representative. Hisham became a certified and experienced Arabic proofreader and worked with Social Justice Platform as an Arabic editor and proofreader for two years. He also has a great passion for marketing, and therefore worked as a copywriter for two years in the advertising industry. He is also a passionate journalist who has experience in conducting research and preparing TV shows.

Zeinab Gamal Ali Mohamed

Zeinab comes from Qena in Upper Egypt. She graduated third in her class from the Faculty of Commerce and Business Administration (English section). She also graduated from Dandara Schools for knowledge as she is a member of Dandara Cultural Center. Following are some examples of her achievements during college:

• Youth Leadership Programme Coordinator: Through an agreement between Dandara Cultural Center (DCC) and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) she represented DCC in the YLP5 regional workshop in Beirut, Lebanon. She was then the programme coordinator in DCC and responsible for following up on the implementation of youth innovation camps, online and offline orientation sessions on SDGs, and community dialogues.
• General English Programme Coordinator: She coordinated the programme plan between DCC and AUC-School of Continuing Education (SCE) to offer AUC-SCE English courses to youth in Upper Egypt.
• Youth Empowerment Programme Specialist: She was responsible for planning, implementing, reporting, and following up on the youth programme in Qena as well as organizing youth-related events such as the Upper Egypt Youth Forum with other governorate coordinators.

Zeinab is ambitious, committed, and eager to learn new skills and knowledge to develop herself and to continually achieve more.

Yousef Hesham Shoukry

Yousef graduated from Cairo University in 2019 with a major in business administration. During his time in college, he and his team established the VIA Club with an aim of narrowing the gap between student competencies and market needs. While serving as a vice president of VIA Club, he facilitated more than 2000 trainings, internships, and work opportunities. Furthermore, his participation in international programs in Japan and working with professionals from around the globe gave him a new perspective on global challenges. After graduation, he worked at Helm as a Business Development Executive, securing 12 Million EGP to fund projects to empower People with Disabilities while building partnerships with more than 50 local and international organizations. His interest in economic empowerment motivated him to join Enroot Consulting where he currently works as a Program Officer, managing projects across Egypt along with various donor organizations.

Ahmed Tag Mohamed

Ahmed is motivated by his passion for civic engagement, intercultural dialogue, the arts, and filmmaking. He decided to apply to the Lazord Fellowship because of his strong belief in arts and culture as a method for social change. Ahmed was particularly engaged during college, writing and translating several published articles on the social and political situation in Egypt and globally. He also volunteered and participated in many civic engagement projects and exchange programs in Egypt and abroad. Ahmed is an art enthusiast who is passionate about photography, videography, creative writing, and storytelling. Since 2017, he has written, filmed, edited, and directed several short films that have been submitted to film festivals, winning awards in Egypt and internationally.