BBC: Social Minded Business trying to Grow in Egypt
Find out more about the social enterprise movement in Egypt. This timely piece from BBC that features some exciting social enterprises ranging from roof-top gardening to paper made from recycled agriculture waste.
Development Marketplace partners, Iman Bibars from Ashoka and Magdi Amin from the International Finance Corporation (a co-sponsor of the upcoming Egypt DM) highlight important barriers blocking the movement's growth and hindering its ability to keep pace with demand for improved goods and services to the poor.
ilies that rely on the slumping tourism industry are having trouble making ends meet.
“Yet we have one undeniable achievement to bolster our confidence: the culture of fear has gone forever.” 
والدوافع المؤدية لأحداث الربيع العربى وثوراته. وللمساهمة فى حل ذلك التحدى وخلق فرص عمل ينوى مشروع 
This movement — if one can call it that — started first in Tunisia with the self-immolation of an unemployed street vendor. This desperate act by Mohamed Bouazizi, a poor 26 year-old university graduate without a steady job to support his family, brought out into the open the seething resentment of ordinary Tunisians at the 23 year rule of President Ben Ali.
I am struck at how much unchartered territory there is for us in this ever-changing and turbulent region. 
While it may take historians years to understand the historic conditions and political factors which triggered the democratic revolution in Tunisia, Egypt, and other countries in the Middle East, one thing seems to be certain. The political actor which has gained the most prominence in these political uprisings has been ‘civil society’. This term encompasses the large sector within any given society which sits between governments and the for-profit or private sector. As such it includes youth movements, workers unions, NGOs, political parties, and faith-based organizations among others. It is a term still little understood, often derided by authoritarian governments, and rarely heard in the Middle East until now. The term in Arabic is “mojtama'a madani” and has the same broad meaning as in English. It is said that when Egyptian ex-President Mubarak first heard the term he mockingly quipped, “So what’s wrong with military society?”