By Mohamed Allouba Close Up Rethinking Higher Education Notorious for producing graduates ill-equipped for the job market, universities are coming under greater scrutiny. The government will need to reach deep in the tool box to fix education. Is the free ride under threat Growing Pains Bickering aside, complaints surfacing at the German University in Cairo reveal some of the difficulties of importing foreign standards of education RethinkingHigher Education Notorious for producing graduates ill-equipped for the job market, universities are coming under greater scrutiny. The government will need to reach deep in the tool box to fix education. Is the free ride under threat? Garbage in return for an education? Seems like a good deal. By Todd Cross Working conditions in the mining business are often hazardous. By Petros Giannakouris With this much action going on, convincing children to get off the street could prove very challenging By Mohamed Allouba Abla El-Badry of the Hope Village Society

By Andrew Bossone

We can’t all be Warren Buffett: The 75-year-old billionaire recently announced that he would donate $37 billion to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which works to alleviate disease and poverty in developing countries. But that doesn’t mean that we turn a blind eye to the world’s problems: Sometimes, the most seemingly mundane of objects can spark great opportunities for change.

For Laila Iskandar, founder and managing director of the Community and Institutional Development group (CID), that opportunity came in the form of an empty shampoo bottle. Multinational cosmetic companies were frustrated that empty bottles of their products were being filled with bogus material, then resold as the real thing with the labels still intact.

Who was doing the refilling? The garbage collectors, of course.

Iskandar put two and two together, and the result is a program in which garbage collectors recycle the empty containers instead of reselling them in return for educational funding from the companies looking to protect their brands. Big business is happy, plastic goes eco and the garbage collectors get a chance at educational mobility. It’s a win-win situation.

And she’s got the accolades to match: At the World Economic Forum held May 20-22 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Iskandar was named Schwab Foundation Social Entrepreneur of the Year for Egypt. Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif presented Iskandar with her award.

Business Today Egypt served as the Schwab Foundation’s partner in Egypt, nominating a handful of worthy social entrepreneurs for the most respected prize in the field. CID is the second Egyptian group to win recognition from Schwab: In 2004, home-grown organic foods giant Sekem Farms took home the top global honor.

Established in 1998 by Klaus Schwab president and founder of the World Economic Forum (WEF) and his wife Hilde, the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, in Schwab’s words, “encourage[s] and foster[s] entrepreneurs working for the public interest — to support them and provide them with access and funding to an international platform for experience exchange that they might otherwise lack.”

The Foundation does this in a number of ways. Although it is legally and financially separate from the WEF, the de facto association, and formal cooperation between the two institutions gives the Foundation’s social entrepreneurs an unmatched network of influential contacts within both the public and private sectors.

Forging connections between social entrepreneurs and their government or business counterparts, the Foundation works to create an environment in which business can contribute positively to social change and eases the burden on overworked social visionaries, who often face seemingly endless stretches of red tape to simply accomplish the smallest of objectives. By incorporating the efforts of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and for-profit social enterprises alike into the wider fabric of business and public affairs, the Schwab Foundation helps to remove some of that red tape, widening the path to greater social change.

The Foundation annually recognizes social entrepreneurs across the world by naming them, like Iskandar, Schwab Foundation Social Entrepreneur of the Year in their respective nations. Candidates are judged on innovation, reach and scope, the replicability and sustainability of their business models, their direct and positive social impact, the entrepreneur’s place as a role model and mutual value added for both the entrepreneur and the Foundation if they are included in the Schwab network.

In other words, social entrepreneurship, and the responsibilities it entails, differs considerably from traditional models of either more generalized community service or charity — and from corporate social responsibility. A social entrepreneur may head a non-profit or a for-profit enterprise, but what distinguishes him or her is that he or she has gone beyond simply throwing money at a problem. The money and the human resources eventually run out, but the problems do not. At the heart of social entrepreneurship is sustainability and seeking to eliminate problems at their root.

Other nominees for this year’s award included Abla El-Badry of the Hope Village Society, and Maher Bushra, founder of the Better Life Association for Comprehensive Development. All nominees were recommended to the Schwab Foundation by a panel of Egyptian judges including Mansour & Co. PricewaterhouseCoopers founder and chairman Farid Mansour, Vodafone Foundation chief Mohammed El-Hamamsy, the Arab Contractors’ Ismail Osman, Osama Leheta of Menavia (British Airways Cargo) and Business Today Egypt Publisher Ann Marie Harrison.

Here’s a look at three finalists.

Of the three finalists, CID was the only for-profit enterprise. Iskandar presents a two-sided business plan. On the one side, CID is a consulting firm with clients as varied as CARE, a United States-based NGO; Arab African Bank; USAID; Proctor & Gamble; the Dutch Embassy; and Xerox Egypt. On the other, it is an organization that has, with some success, addressed issues such as gender, health, credit, adult literacy and the environment — counting some 10,000 members of rural communities and 20,000 garbage collectors among its beneficiaries.

The two aspects of the company work hand-in-hand for sustainable community development.

Though CID’s docket is diverse, Iskandar has striven for a “holistic approach,” working on projects not in isolation, but in a way that builds on itself, creating networks through the replication of successful projects in new locations.

This is not only sustainable; it’s also economical in the short-term. In one project, CID sent men from the Moqattam Hills, who were already trained in recycling, to share their skills with Bedouins working in tourist towns in South Sinai, building networks at the same time as relieving its small staff of only 15 full-time employees.

Iskandar doesn’t see this in any way contradictory to building a strong business. In her new role as a part of the Foundation’s network, she is calling for businesses, entrepreneurs and the government to step up to work for the benefit of the impoverished and marginalized. She is not asking for these leaders to act out of the goodness of their hearts — although that can be the reason for undertaking these beneficent goals — but rather that they act for their own motives.

Working with the poor, she argues, does not mean forgoing a profit.

“There is not a poor community that is totally bankrupt,” she says. “They all have something to bring to the table.”

“Why can’t we actually decide to go into business ventures to make money and serve the community as well? They’re not mutually exclusive — it just requires a different mentality,” she continues. “We shouldn’t be going to bed and sleeping easy at night knowing that 30% of the people in this country are living on less than two dollars a day. That should be a source of great discomfort.”

Iskandar would like to see more companies making business plans with this 30% in their minds. It takes some creativity, she admits, but she says there are many ways to engage this segment of the population besides viewing them as a source of cheap labor.

“We’ve got to stop designing our economy around the well-to-do. We’ve got to design it around [the poor], because — I swear — they are going to drag the country down. We can’t do it with some and leave the rest behind. And all these intelligent businessmen, why don’t they see it?”

For Iskandar, it has to start where it first went wrong: education.

“What can the private sector do? It suffers from a poorly trained human resource base [Job applicants] have left school with no skills. The private sector has to train and retrain and teach all the basics. Now, instead of waiting to receive these graduates and training the small group of people they are going to employ, is there something they would like to do now, for everybody, regardless if someone is going to end up in their enterprise?”

“There’s mounting evidence that the state cannot provide the type of education [necessary] to bring our population up to an international standard and compete in international markets,” Iskandar continues. “It can’t be done. The burden is too big. The problem of poor-quality education cannot be remedied by just state action. So you have a choice: do you want to say, ‘That’s not my area of intervention. That’s the state’s responsibility,’ and watch it improve slowly? Or do you want to truly build Egypt?”

While ‘building Egypt’ may sound like a tall order, opportunities for social entrepreneurism can be found in the smallest of businesses. Iskandar gives the example of the neighborhood mechanic:

“The little boys that you might seek to employ, who are not schooled and have to go to work because they are in female-headed households, could be your kid, your nephews. So why don’t you train them to be mechanics rather than putting them in sweatshop situations?” she asks. “They are going to be better workers for you. So I want you to use a selfish motive: Produce a better worker. And consider for a moment that kid could be your next of kin. A little compassion doesn’t hurt.”

And with a little compassion should come a little creativity.

“If I were to open a factory and employ people at an above average salary, that’s good,” Iskandar says. “But in addition, have I looked at all the other aspects protecting them from industrial accidents, protecting them with social insurance, maybe helping them out a bit by establishing a pre-school so they can go to work more easily? Have I, in the screening process of employment, targeted female-headed households, the poorest of the poor? Have I done my share of thinking about how these people will grow professionally? Or am I content in giving them fair wages, minimum wages?”

That model isn’t a new one. The winners of the last Schwab award in Egypt were Ibrahim Abouleish and his son Helmy, the founders and operators of organic mega-farm Sekem. Besides protecting the environment and farmers by not using pesticides, Sekem boasts a school, a health facility and cultural activities for its resident employees. It also happens to be a very successful, multi-million-pound business. Iskandar realizes that the Sekem model might not work for every company, but she appreciates the approach its founders have taken to dedicate themselves not only to profit, but to community development as well.

At the end of the day, Iskandar’s idea of social entrepreneurship seeks to harness what private sector businesses do best — making money efficiently — into something that could help the larger community.

“I’m all for efficiency,” she says. “I’m for hard work. I’m for competence. Getting rich, there’s nothing wrong with that. The profit motive drives the performance. Great, let’s invest in that. But let’s take something out of the social context of development and say, ‘Can business still make money and improve the population at large? Does it have a role to play with government?’”

Iskandar also warns that poverty and lack of education have the potential to pose problems much greater than just an unskilled workforce. Take terrorism: Her hometown of Minya is a case study of how marginalization and the inability to access resources often translate into deadly violence — violence which hit Egypt where it hurt most, as tourists took their hard currency elsewhere after attacks in the 1990s.

Iskandar argues that business should be motivated to pour some money into education in impoverished areas such as Upper Egypt “because if they don’t spend the money improving the curriculum, improving the teacher quality, improving the salaries, then the people are going to turn violent. And the violence is going to affect their business, particularly the tourism sector.”

Indeed, she adds, there are historic sites outside Luxor, Aswan and Abu Simbel, but most people will never see them. “Tourists cannot go to Minya because of the security issue, so you have a big chunk of tourist sites taken out of the market. Who wants an escort?”

While Upper Egypt may be at the bottom of the country’s socio-economic ladder, it is still filled with many good business opportunities for the socially-minded entrepreneur. The key is to take a holistic approach to a possible investment, Iskandar suggests.

“What I’m saying is to go to Upper Egypt and invest in a project that will make people work,” she says. “And while we’re at it, take a look at what’s happening in the school and take a look at the water supply that people are drinking. I’m asking for deeper actions.”

But Iskandar’s model of private enterprise helping the impoverished and marginalized may not always work if applied to addressing a macro-level problem, rather than a specific community or neighborhood. Sometimes, a non-profit NGO is a better bet.

One of this year’s Schwab Award finalists, Abla El-Badry, was nominated in recognition of her work with the Hope Village Society, an NGO that works with more than 4,000 street children each year. El-Badry’s approach to social activism differs from Iskandar’s in the nuts and bolts, but both have built social change on a firm foundation of market principles — and always with an eye towards sustainability.

El-Badry, a social worker by training, was first introduced to Hope Village a few years after its founding in 1988 when she went to donate her zakat money. At the time, Richard Hemsley was running the day-to-day operations, and he invited El-Badry to come back to see the services provided to the children. He convinced her to sign up to work in one of the centers as a professional social worker, but also a positive female role model. At the time, the only other female contact for many of the children was the cook.

El-Badry agreed, but she wanted to make some changes.

“I wasn’t satisfied with the services, because they were really normal services,” she says, “and this kind of child, when I knew their background, was really different from other disadvantaged children. We didn’t want to be like any other orphanage. We wanted to do something that was really different for their psychological health.”

Eight months later, Hemsley died and the chairman selected El-Badry to become the new general manager. When she took over the facilities’ operations, she conducted a study of the children’s cases. She found that the children’s often abusive pasts and pessimism about the future made them feel alienated from the rest of society.

She began to tell them: “You have problems like any other families and homes. We are strong, we are going to be special, and we are going to succeed.”

With the support of Hope Village board members, many of whom had been involved with the society for years before El-Badry signed on, she created programs that not only supply children with the skills they’ll need to succeed as adults, but also provide a financial base for the organization itself.

“We empower [the children and teenagers] to help themselves instead of depending on other resources. We give them vocational training and educational training that could be used in the future,” she says. “We don’t take a child to give him services: We give him skills that allow him to be a good citizen when he graduates from our program. We give him resources to not depend on others forever.”

This translates to a number of projects. Children learn about gardening in greenhouses in Tenth of Ramadan, where they grow organic vegetables using hydroponic methods. They then assist in marketing the products, which are mostly sold to hotels and large restaurants. The income from the sale of these vegetables supports the other activities and services of the organization, and when children “graduate” — that is, they grow up — they often find their first jobs in this same garden.

Other vocational training facilities for the children result in candles, silk carpets, bead jewelry and carpentry, all of which generate revenue for Hope Village.

For the families of the children, El-Badry has created a loans department at the society. The department gives micro-loans to the families of the children, usually to the mother, to help them start a small business such as making and selling crafts or clothes. The program has helped more than 600 families, many of whom have worked together to help each other.

El-Badry’s next inspiration came while visiting a colleague in Morocco. Her colleague’s organization had fixed up an old, abandoned train car and used it as a reception center. The train was stationary, but with this the idea of a mobile street unit was born. It has worked for Hope Village as a first point of contact with the children, and saves money and time by not having to set up a reception center in every neighborhood. Similar mobile units have been widely successful in America in combating homelessness, drugs and prostitution.

The street is riddled with physical and sexual abuse, drugs and social rejection. For a young child, though, life on the street can be alluring. There are no rules, no authority, no discipline. The challenge for Hope Village became convincing children they helped get off the street to stay off it. This sparked the creation of short-term transitional centers.

“There are very comprehensive rehabilitation programs at this stage. The [individual] psychological work is much more important than the long-term [orphanages]. We are trying to orient the children and make them decide to stay,” explains El-Badry. “Most of the time it works. But if he doesn’t adapt, he can go back to the street and get the help at the reception centers ten hours a day.”

With its mobile units, reception centers, short-term centers and long-term orphanages, Hope Village has succeeded in providing a complete array of services for one of the most marginalized groups of the capital. In 2000, it also started working with street girls as a pilot project. After two short months, it opened a shelter in addition to the reception center. Today, there is a home for new mothers, which also provides vocational training.

“They become our children,” says Sami Gabr, a member of Hope Village’s board of directors. “We take care of schools, university — everything. There are those we realize will never go back to their families. They are our children until they are older; we sometimes even get them a flat if the man wants to marry.”

Organizations such as Hope Village show the importance of investing in social capital. Instead of leaving street children to fall prey to drugs, violence and abuse, the Village has given them a chance at actually entering the job market by helping them acquire skills and an education. It’s accomplished this by doing what social entrepreneurs do best — thinking outside the box. Or, as El-Badry puts it: “Untraditional problems need untraditional solutions and interventions.”

Maher Bushra, another finalist of the Schwab award, founded the Better Life Association for Comprehensive Development a little over ten years ago to supply quarry workers in Minya with safety education, health care and legal advice that their employers were not providing.

Growing up in Minya, the 15,000 miners in the governorate’s limestone-rich regions were a constant reminder to Bushra of the dangers of lax workplace regulations in high-risk jobs. The miners wore loose galabeyas that often got caught in the machinery, mutilating and even killing them. At the time, they had no adequate health insurance to protect them from frequent accidents. Bushra’s NGO lobbied successfully for legal changes requiring companies to insure workers, and then went on to raise awareness among workers of their rights. A syndicate was also formed to help them help themselves.

Eventually, Better Life expanded its target beyond the quarry workers to cover a number of at-risk populations in Upper Egypt. Today, its projects also address the needs of fishermen, migrant farm-workers and other day laborers, garbage collectors, child workers and women. In every case, however, it continues to be a question of how to empower populations to help themselves.

For Bushra, this self-help ethos is the essence of social entrepreneurism.

“Instead of giving me a fish and feeding me for day, teach me how to fish,” he says, paraphrasing the well-known adage. “I want to make a revolution in fishing; to talk about a new method in fishing. There are alternatives. A pioneer, a social leader, is not building a school, but changing the curriculum, changing the minds of the people in the schools.”

Businesses innovate and create new ways to market and sell their products, and that talent can be used to serve goals higher than the bottom line. Bushra complains that the government has been strict about controlling NGOs and their money, but the Nazif government has been strong in creating opportunities for businesses. Companies can use their economic and political capital to pressure the government to create a more auspicious environment for businesses and the community.

“My idea of a social entrepreneur is someone who works in the business sector but truly looks at the profit and loss statement in a way that measures the well-being of the community,” asserts Iskandar. “And that’s not an impossibility.”  bt