The Man Pulling Radishes
Pointed My Way
With A Radish

- Issa (1763 - 1827)

Sunday, August 14, 2011

Learning and Serving in Egypt and the US

Ok I lied, I am ALMOST going to bring us up to present day in this next post, only because I had the privilege to take part in an incredible program this summer called LearnServe Egypt, which I think deserves a little mention here. ( For more complete coverage and perspectives, visit www.ifeegypt.org )

LearnServe Egypt was a six week program created by the Institute for Education in partnership with Mercator XXI LLC, and the AUC School of Business, where 6 Americans and 6 Egyptians were united to form lasting bonds of friendship and have endless hours of bus sing a longs (initiated by yours truly) and discussions over everything from sarcasm in different cultures to the Egyptian Revolution and the prospects for its future. oh, and we also had a mission of creating the plans for social businesses that would benefit Egypt and forge greater ties between Egypt and the US.

The first 2 weeks we spent in Egypt, traveling around to visit sites, businesses and listen to speakers from the government, business and education worlds, while staying at the lovely dorms at the new campus of the American University in Cairo. Here we identified social problems and started coming up with business plans that would address our problem areas, culminating in a final pitch on the last day where a group of Egyptian Business leaders shredded our hopes and dreams with a chain-saw.

The second two weeks we tried to keep working on the putting the pieces back together but mostly fiddled with Skype and Google+ and decided it would be easier to sleep alot and post on each others Facebook walls :D

The Third and Final Phase took place in Washington DC, where we all stayed in the Dupont Circle Hotel and at first really enjoyed DC, then met tons of super interesting speakers (like the former deputy secretary of defense and current president of CSIS, the former mayor of DC, the CEO of DCs fastest growing company, and the Ambassador from Egypt, among others!), then had to work ALOT, then enjoyed DC even more! This all culminated in another Final Pitch, this time to a panel of American venture capitalists and Business Leaders who then proceeded to... be alot nicer than we had expected, gave us great feedback and told us our plans were excellent!

All in all in was a fantastic intro to many new things for me, particularly in entrepreneurship and business formation, and I'm sure the many skills and connections will prove invaluable both in the immediate future and on down the long and winding road (dah dah, dah dah, daaa)

Ok next post I really will enter the present, pinkyswear

No comments:

Post a Comment