Report on Volunteering with A&A

Volunteering With Alwan & Awtar

In August 2009, a friend of mine introduced me to an NGO in El-Mokattam called "Alwan & Awtar". I was fascinated by the work they do with the marginalized children of Masaken Elzelzal and how much impact they had on the surrounding area. Alwan & Awtar (A&A) Was established in 2005 with the aim of promoting visual and performing arts and using arts as a vehicle for social development. Its vision is to enable a body of inspired youth to think creatively and see beauty in their surroundings which in turn will enrich their lives and its mission is to create a unique haven where impoverished youth can nurture their artistic senses and experience self discovery through visual and performing arts in a professional, yet flexible and enjoyable environment.

A&A targets the marginalized youths (Age 7-20) of Masaken El-Zelzal area and works on strengthening their basic learning skills, enhancing their creativity and broadening their cultural sphere. It achieves this through a team of dedicated art professionals and volunteers who interact with and encourage youths to experiment with arts in a variety of fields including handcrafts, music, photography, painting, writing, languages and other. Some of the projects implemented by A&A included "Theatre of the oppressed" in cooperation with Save the children (USA), where the youths are trained through a number of workshops on drama, music, drawing, creative writing, story telling, photography and graphic design, that enable them to produce their own play, hence giving them the chance to express their feelings, experiences and what they go through in their daily lives. Another project that was implemented is "Encouraging youths participation in the community" in cooperation with The Coptic Evangelic Organization for Social Services (CEOSS). The project aimed at embedding a sense of responsibility in tolerance in youths towards their community and becoming proactive members in their surrounding community.

On my first day with A&A, I had a meeting with Azza Kamel, the director and she gave me a brief about the organizations background and activities. I talked with her about my previous experience in SCREAM project (Supporting Child Rights through Education, Arts and Media) and how we used arts, specifically creative writing and drama, to educate children about their rights. I suggested starting Creative Writing sessions with the children aged 10-12 using the tools of Active learning and she liked the idea.

I started my first session with the kids by getting to know them, their hobbies, their personalities and their attitude towards reading and writing and I have to say that it was a tough job. I had 8 kids in the class between the age of 10-12, most of which were hyperactive and couldn't for a whole ten minutes. I had to grab their attention all the time by playing games and dividing them into groups and motivating competition among them. From my interviews with the kids I found that out of the 8 kids, only two loved reading and writing. The others were mainly interested in watching cartoons and movies. Their linguistic skills were also poor which meant that I had to focus on strengthening their reading and writing skills through games and visual aids. At the end of the first lesson I talked with the person responsible for the M&E to get some feedback on the session and we concluded that I need to focus on three things on my coming class: keeping them busy and active throughout the session using interactive methods of teaching, teaching them the basics of reading and writing throughout the session, and introducing them to important ethics and values (for example: teamwork, discipline, honesty) through the games and activities.

I also had the opportunity during my volunteering period with A&A to attend a three day training workshop on “Non-formal Education” with Aleya Mokhtar, an educational consultant. The workshop involved how to design a training curriculum. It aimed at familiarizing participants with the basic elements of an integrated curriculum that focuses on lifelong skills that are revisited throughout students' lives. The training was very informative and gave me an insight on how to set the objectives of your curriculum according to your target group and setting the curriculum that meets this objective.

In an interview conducted with Natasha Mahendran, a project manager at A&A, I asked her about how the organization applies the concepts of participation, gender empowerment and the use of social capital in their work. She mentioned that A&A activities are implemented by experienced and creative animators or instructors and complemented with the time of diverse professional and student volunteers from both Egypt and overseas. Foreign volunteers in particular expose the children and youth to other cultures and different ways of doing things. A&A staffs from the community assist animators during their classes and learn new skills in the process. This enables them to teach the children themselves and learn a lucrative skill and empower themselves as women in a traditionally restrictive community.
Moreover, older youths who have learned new skills through A&A courses are also encouraged to volunteer with the children and teach them what they have learned. Animators and volunteers coordinate their activities and any needs they have for materials with the Program Coordinator/Manager of each arm of A&A- Non-formal Education, Library, Arts & Crafts. Animators also discuss student progress with the project staff and come up with strategies to make improvements and encourage good behaviour and excellence amongst the beneficiaries. A&A continues to be guided by its beneficiaries and the local community, focusing on the priorities they feel are most important.

A&A believes in the active participation of the children and youth of the community in the decision making process to choose what activities will be run. Following focus group discussions, new activities are made available. This is the case for the non-formal education courses. They have been developed as a response to the thirst for knowledge expressed by the children and youth.
According to Natasha, “A&A runs on a system of mutual respect. Animators, volunteers and staff respect the children and youth of the community as individuals with feelings, desires and dreams. By listening to their opinions we avoid taking a top-down approach but rather encourage and promote a participatory approach in all our courses and activities”.
I also asked her during the interview about whether the donors impose a certain agenda, goals and policies on the organization for them to gain funding. She replied that donor policies can cause some level of imposition. However as long as they are in line with A&A goals, needs and strategy, this is fine. She gave an example of their compliance with one donor requiring them to hire a full-time accountant.

In conclusion, my experience at A&A was insightful and it taught me a lot about civil society in Egypt and The activities performed by NGOs. I also concluded from my experience with A&A that it actually takes time for an NGO to be highly professional as the limited capital it has and it's basic dependence of funding restrict it's ability to recruit professional staffs and the use of technological methods. However, if the NGO is built on good will and on a few of professional insightful board, they will make sure to update and improve the NGO and it's impact on the surrounding community with all the efforts and resources they have, and this is what I perceived in A&A.

Third Creative writing session- 21st Nov.

In this session, i decided that the kids should start writing some simple words to get used to writing. we started by playing a game where i gave them a word "School" and i asked them to write as many words as possible related to this word. i gave them 2 minutes and the winner was the one who wrote more words than the others. Then we started cutting small squares out of three different colors. i divided the kids to two groups and each group takes squares out of each color. i asked the two groups to write descriptions of persons on the red colored squares, places on the blue squares, and verbs on the green ones.after the two groups were done, they swapped the squares and i asked each kid and pick a square out of each color and make up a story. the session was really fun and the kids learnt how to use their creativity in making up stories

Second creative writing lesson

Last saturday, i had my second creative writing session with the kids and it was amazing. i gave them magazines, poster, scissors, markers and glue and asked them to make a story by cutting characters and objects from the magazine and sticking them to the poster. the kids were really so excited and they started making up their stories. one group made a story about a married couple with children. another made a story about a fish and the third made an action story about a girl being kidnapped. what i like about this session was that the kids were being so creative and they learned to work together in a team.

First creative writing session, 26th Oct

last monday, i started my first creative writing workshop with the children in the NGO, and it was such a good experience. we started by playing an ice breaking game and then i discussed with them what stories they like to read and whether they tried writing a story before or not. i introduced them afterwards to the basics of writing a story, and then we started writing a story together where each kid says a sentence and the following kid continues till we reach the end of the story. challenges that were faced during the session is that kids don't like sitting only and listening, so next time there'll be lots of games and handcrafts related to the topic. also, their grammer and linguistic skills needs to be strengthened throughout the course

Orientation session- Thursday 15th Oct.

last thursday, i went to alwan and awtar for an orientation session. i met the other volunteers and staffs, we were around 15 people. we started the session by introducing ourselves and then the project manger started to give us a brief about the organization and the target group. afterwards, we started discussing the non formal education goals, where it aims at developing and strengthening the soft skills of kids such as thinking, managing, relating, working, living and creativity skills. it aims also to develop their character of caring, being and giving. we discussed the ways to deliver all these to them. then, we moved the the session plan and how the class is divided. first, we must set a general and specific objective for each lesson. the lesson starts by an introduction, game or activity, sharing, elaboration and then evaluation of the lesson. i'll be starting creative writing lessons with the kids by next week

Assignment #1

Alwan-wa-Awtar, is a non-profit organization that has been established in December 2005 aiming to promote performing and visual arts, in addition, to use these arts as facilitators for social development. They, also, aim at creating a comfortable environment that allows youth to nurture their artistic senses and allow them, as inspired members of their community, to see beauty within their surroundings, and hence, develop their lives.

Alwan-wa-Awtar targets the inhabitants of the area known as El Hadaba El Wosta in Cairo's Moqattam hills. This area is composed of people who were housed there when the 1992 earthquake destroyed their original homes and they have fully recovered since. The organization targets youth between seven and twenty years of age where they attempt to help them surpass their societal limitations, develop their creativity, enhance their basic learning skills, strengthen their thinking skills, and increase their cultural sphere.

There are on-going artistic activities at Alwan-wa-Awtar organized by artistic professional who highly value the importance and the role of development through the arts. The activities are numerous in the organization's archive; however, one chooses to give examples of what one has been exposed to upon visiting Alwan-wa-Awtar. Musical instruments are a big portion of what the children participate in and it highly astonished one to hear them playing all sorts of the songs on the guitar ranging from classical Arabic (Om Kalthoum's Enta Omry) to movie soundtracks (Nino Rota's The Godfather) to popular oldies (Shirley Basie's Love Story) to rock songs (Pink Floyd's Comfortably Numb and Metallica's Wish You Were Here). Moreover, one found playing this music to be a great bonding experience with the children proving that art overpasses cultural and generation gaps. More importantly, the organization engages the children in theatre and specifically, Theatre of the Oppressed; which is a theatrical genre developed by Brazilian director Augosto Boal to create an outlet for Latin American societies to voice their concerns within their respective communities.

Alwan-wa-Awtar further enriches its activities through field trips where the children are exposed to the Egyptian artistic community with visits to places like Fagnoun and The Townhouse Gallery. Recently, the children went on a field trip to the Cairo Opera House to attend the musical performance of Broadway Comes to Egypt. This was especially significant for them as the show's choreographer had visited the organization and had given the children dancing workshops. Such field trips give them a taste of how the said art form is conducted in the professional arena.

One chose to work with Alwan-wa-Awtar for several reasons. The first is the passion for the arts itself and the strong belief that art is a language that all peoples can communicate through. Hence, development through the arts could be greatly benefiting for all types of youth around the globe. Second, one has been highly interested in working with Alwan-wa-Awtar for the past year. One's first exposition to the organization was in writing up a proposal for a Business Writing course where one found it surprisingly amazing that such an organization existed in Egypt. Earlier this summer, one visited Alwan-wa-Awtar with a photography course and was practically exposed to their work and wanted to participate in it. However, time was a great constrain and this course practicum serves as the necessary encouragement to make the time for active participation in one's society. Finally, one strongly believes in specialization. Several other organizations were options for this practicum; however, one chose Alwan-wa-Awtar as it is the only one that would allow one to share the artistic expertise that one has been being trained in for the past five years.

The tasks one will be engaged in within Alwan-wa-Awtar are in the form of conducting workshops for the duration of the practicum i.e. two months, once a week. There are two different workshops that one will be conducting. The first is a physical fitness workshop as one is a former professional tennis player and a current coach. The organization finds this workshop to be in demand to properly direct the children's energy and allow them to physically engage as opposed to just sitting around. The second is a photography workshop as one is a professional photographer. The organization finds this workshop to be in demand as the children themselves are highly interested in it especially since it was previously offered; however, they have been lacking an instructor for it for quite some time.

As explained above, one's first impressions of Alwan-wa-Awtar during the past year were those of admiration and enthusiasm being exposed to the organization through papers or a lecture by its director, Ms. Azza Kamel. The actual impression upon working there was quite different though. One still has the same admiration and enthusiasm as before; however, matters are a lot more in perspective now. It was quite interesting during the physical fitness workshop to notice that children are the same across the board. One coaches at Heliopolis Sporting Club, which is a club mostly for richer families where as at Alwan-wa-Awtar, one was coaching children from Al Hadaba Al Wosta. Interestingly, they were acting the same in how much they whine about being in pain due to the different muscle exercise, how they sometimes try to cheat their scores, etc. They are just children, one figured and the experience of coaching at the club greatly helped in properly conducting the workshop; keeping it fun while maintaining discipline. It was a lot quieter during the photography workshop as one was teaching the children about the basic theory of the art. As a small class, they were not all that interested as it was theoretical rather than practical, which is why we will be tackling practical next Saturday through building our own pin-hole cameras. However, one found the children to be quite smart as they were quickly grasping the concepts and analyzing the material.

In conclusion, one is very thankful for the chance to participate in Alwan-wa-Awtar and giving back to the community through what one knows best and looks forward to a fruitful experience throughout the semester and beyond.

My First day in Alwan&Awtar

In 1992, Cairo inhabitants faced a devastating earthquake that shook Egypt. lots of people lost their shanty homes along with their meager possessions, among those were the Inhabitants of ElHadaba ElWosta in Mokattam hills. After losing their homes and possessions amid the earthquake, the government provided them with flats in the earthquake buildings (masaken elzelzal) in Mokattam in return for a reduced price. However, the inhabitants of those buildings still suffer from harsh living conditions such as high rates of unemployment, poor access to education and health services. Children and youth are among the sufferers since they many of them are deprived from education due to the poor economic conditions; even those who have the privilege of going to schools suffer from low quality of education and outdated education methods that don't contribute to developing the skills and potentials of the child.

In this regard, Alwan and Awtar (A&A) non-profit organization was established in 2005 in the heart of Mokattam near masaken elzelzal (the earthquake buildings) where it serves the marginalized children and youths living in the surrounding area. A&A has a mission of creating a unique haven where impoverished youth can nurture their artistic senses and experience self discovery through visual and performing arts in a professional, yet flexible and enjoyable environment. Its vision is to enable a body of inspired youth to think creatively and see beauty in their surroundings which in turn will enrich their lives. Through A&A marginalized children and youths get access to workshops in a variety of artistic and creative field including Drawing, photography, music, story telling, Drama, handcrafts and others. These workshops are conducted by professional volunteers who believe in the power of arts as an agent for development and social change. The workshops are also supplemented with field visits to arts, galleries and other cultural events to richen their experience and enhance their understanding and appreciation of arts.

Previous projects of A&A included

• "Theatre for oppressed" in partnership with save the children (USA) and Naseej. This project aimed at imparting theatre based methodologies to youth and kids, as a means of self expression and self development.

• "Encouraging Youth participation in the community" in partnership with Coptic Evangelic Organisation for Social Services (CEOSS). This project offered youths a series of workshops that aimed at embedding in them a sense of tolerance and citizenship

• "ME Book" in partnership with the Institute of Cultural Affairs (ICA). This project aimed at supporting the children to set goals and find purpose in their lives. ME Book is a book that takes the children on a journey of self discovery. A journey during which children think about themselves and their living environment.

On the 31^st September 2009, I went to visit A&A to check their activities and their internship opportunities based on a recommendation of one of my friends. I went to their office in Mokattam and as soon as I went in, I felt amazed by the vibrant environment inside the place. Children were moving all around the place. Some were sitting on the table in the middle with their teacher doing pottery; others were sitting in the corner reading some books. I could also hear music playing from the room on the other side. The way the kids looked had a profound effect on me, they were really happy and enjoying their time and it looked to me as if this place actually turned out of be their haven from the outside world. I sat with Azza Kamel, the director, and she told me all about the history of the place and its achievements. It was really interesting how in such a small period, they were able to do all these projects and reach out to a large number of children and youths.

In Our talk together, I told her about my previous experience in facilitating creative writing workshops with children laborers through SCREAM project (supporting child rights through education, arts and media). In these workshops, children learnt about how to be imaginative and how to communicate their imaginations and their personal experiences through writing short stories and poetries. I told her about how those workshops had a very profound effect on children as writing was a way of expression that helped them to communicate to others their feelings, experiences and dreams. Azza liked the idea and we agreed together to start planning and setting a curriculum for the workshops and conducting a test session. She told me how interested children will be towards creative writing as she has many children in the organization who love writing stories and songs. As a good coincidence also, two of those children were already there and they came to us while we were talking to narrate to us the story they have just written. It was about a cat who lost its way and then grabbed by a kind man. It was a very nice story. They also wrote and composed two songs which they sang to us. As soon as they finished we applauded strongly to them and I was really happy to see such talented kids. I told them about the creative writing workshops we are planning to start soon and they were very interested.

We also talked about the fundraising plans and schemes of the organization and the director told me of their plan to shift their focus in the near future to the private sector. We agreed also that I'll be working on providing them with fundraising sources and contacts as I have been working in that field before.

At last, I have to mention that I feel very proud when I come across an organization like A&A that brings together the promising youths and adults of Egypt that share the same goal together, to make a difference.