Poverty

Almost two months ago the announcement was made about the World Bank, IFC and partners providing grants of 1.25 million via the Egypt DM. Since that announcement, many have been contacting us via various channels to find out who the actual 34 grantees are? Well here is your answer! Below please find the 34 selected grantees institutions, with links to their websites and social channels when available. They are broken down by governorate, with a very small blurb about each one. Why so little information? Well, most of these organizations speak Arabic only and therefor their information is only available in Arabic. We are working on translating all related documents, and while that takes time, we hope to have full pages on our website for each one of them later in September. We also hope to do feature stories here in our blog for some if not all the grantees, stay tuned!

ASSYUT

Community Development Association in Al Ezzeyya: Recycling agricultural residues and animal waste into compost and high value organic fertilizers, to manage waste, decrease environment hazards, and increase productivityof the agricultural land.
Friends Association for the Disabled and Community Development at Sadfa: Improving livelihood through supporting modernization, quality management and marketing of beehives and their honey production.
Alhayah Erada for Sustainable Development: Revival  of kilim/wool weaving to generate income and create employment for women of the Beni Addiat village.
Community Development Association in Badary: Hand-processing and packaging of pomegranate fruit to increase income for young girls and youth through introducing quality and marketing to new local and export markets.

Thirty-five organizations will be awarded $800,000 by the Egypt Development Marketplace (DM) funded by The World Bank Group (WBG) and its local and international partners. Each of the grantees will receive $25,000 to scale up their business model that would generate employment in the agriculture and handicraft sectors. Winning organizations will beshowcased at a DM sponsored event. A number of financial institutions, social entrepreneurs, investors, development organizations, and government officials will also participate in the event to bring attention to organizations implementing innovative solutions to unemployment in the country.

Overwhelming response to “Call for Proposal”

The call for proposals was launched in November and closed in January. At closing, 180 proposals from 171 organizations were submitted for funding. Preference was given to projects implemented in Upper Egypt and the majority of proposals were for projects in Minya. Applicants comprised the following types of organizations: 89 percent were Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs), 7 percent were private companies and 4 percent were foundations.

From its conception, the Egypt DM has been designed to surface and build the skills of organizations creating jobs in the country, primarily in the poorest areas with an emphasis on Upper Egypt. To generate interest in the competition and to ensure organizations operating in targeted areas applied, outreach events were held in Assyut, Qena, Aswan, and Minya. As a follow up, skill-building workshops in business planning were held for each of the 70 finalists to ensure high quality proposals were submitted.