Community Projects in Egypt
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Community Projects in Egypt
You don’t need to be jumping out of aeroplanes, free wheeling though the desert or 30 metres under water to be having an adventure in Egypt. Indeed one of the best ways to challenge yourself, get off the beaten track and really get to know the Egyptians is to take part in some form of community project in Egypt.
Community projects in Egypt are a great way to make a positive contribution and certainly one of the more rewarding travel experiences a visitor can have.
The best community projects involve working alongside the locals (typically on a physical task) to build or renovate some badly needed resource for a local community. Participants are usually asked to donate or raise funds to help cover the materials and then donate their time to actually aid in the construction.
The community gets a new resource they couldn’t otherwise afford and the experience of meeting well meaning, open minded foreigners, and the traveller gets to interact and integrate with a local community, and leave something very positive and tangible behind them. All in all, it’s extremely rewarding for everyone involved and can combined with a few days of recreation will make those days on the beach seem all the more deserved.
A community project might take one of the following forms:
Constructing a home for an impoverished family
Building/painting a school
Building a well or a dam to give a community access to clean water
Volunteering in an orphanidge
Tending a Bedouin garden
Working with local farmers
A multi task mixture of all of the above.
It’s estimated that some 20% of Egypt’s population currently live below the poverty line (CIA World Fact Book). If you’re in Egypt and have time or funds (or both!) to donate there are a great number of worthwhile causes operating at local and national level. A few are mentioned below:
The Makhad Trust
The Makhad trust is a UK based charity who exist, in their own words word “…to sustain the environment and the natural heritage of the people who live in those regions and, while doing so, to appreciate and to learn from their traditional wisdom”
The charity organises a number of community projects in some of the more remote part of Egypt’s Sinai peninsular. Among other projects, the Makhad Trust have worked with Europeans and local Bedouin communities in Sinai to build drinking wells, dams, energy pumps, schools, carft centres and gardens.
For more information visit the Makhad Trust Website
Embah Safaris
Embah safaris is primarily a tour operator based in Dahab that organised a variety of adventurous itineraries across Egypt. Embah are also involved in a number of local initiatives in Sinai that work alongside Bedouin tribes.
On going projects include the planting of trees, women of the desert and the building of new water retainers. Embah safaris can arrange bespoke initiatives for visitors to Egypt to take part in said projects.
For more information visit the Embah Safaris Website
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