The Social Promotion project begins its activities in Egypt with the holding of awareness days in Assiut, Sohag, Qena and Luxor

Field activities commenced in Egypt as part of the project: “Support decent work for vulnerable groups in Upper Egypt through micro-entrepreneurship, with emphasis on Tourism”, financed by AECID.

A total of 4 awareness sessions was held between April 7-10 in the following areas: Assiut; Sohag; Luxor and Qena. Given the geographical proximity of Luxor and Qena governorates both events were held in Luxor city.

176 participants attended the awareness sessions. The breakdown of participants by location is as follows: Assiut – 43; Sohag – 35; Luxor & Qena day 1 – 45; Luxor & Qena day 2 – 53.

Participants were engaged to learn about the value chain in general and the value chain of the tourism sector in particular along with the different kind of values that can be associated with a product and/or service.

The day was rich in activities and exercises, the second part of the workshop was structured through the method of “Idea Cafè”, a simple, effective, and flexible format for facilitating collaborative dialogue. Participants shared knowledge about challenges they encountered to establish a new business and discussed potential solutions.

By the end of the day a written exercise was performed by all young entrepreneurs attending the awareness session to apply the learning achieved during the day. This “classwork” is to help the local partner Association of Upper Egypt for Education and Development (AUEED) to select the 80 participants who are to move onto the next training about entrepreneurship.

Note: especially in Sohag several women participating in the awareness sessions attended the training with their children, one woman attended with her baby. This is not atypical in Egypt when it comes to engaging women in capacity building processes. Often, they have no one to attend to their children if they are to leave home for a whole day to join a training and their only option is to bring them along. When this happens, it is usually an indicator of how much the woman deems the opportunity to be important for her own empowerment.