Four Pillars of The Green Arm

1. Promoting and guiding environmental activism

There is vast potential that can be untapped through guidance for environmental action to channel all the positive energy we are experiencing today from youth anxious to see results and change. 

The Green Arm follows a thematic environmental action program whereby it extends institutional support, technical assistance and guidance for a number of initiatives following the same theme in an effort to build synergies and maximize collective impact on the sector. Our platform allows youth-led environmental initiatives to pool into a structured development process.  Additionally, we extend support to individual environmental activists by facilitating access to networks and nominating them to attend training programs and workshops.

The governing principle is that sustaining environmental initiatives can only be achieved if the initiative is appealing and fun as much as it is deep in meaning. We like to work with trendsetters who use creative activities to promote environmental awareness.  

For our first year we chose "Cycling", as it instills the values of sustainable living, is highly visible, and can be used as a vehicle for change. Moreover, groups that promote cycling have managed to attract huge numbers of followers in a very short time. Using Cycling as a tool, we aim to advocate for improved city planning and environmental management. 

Do you need technical assistance for your initiative? Email: greenarm@nahdetmasr.org.

2. Knowledge sharing - Salon El Mahrousa Green series

Salon El Mahrousa is a forum for all sorts of development-related initiatives concerning young Egyptian Professionals, usually hosted at NM office.

Building on the success of Salon El Mahrousa, we have added the Green Series, to bring together environmentalists and enviro-curious individuals and enable knowledge sharing. 

Throughout the first year we have conducted regular environmental awareness sessions addressing current environmental issues in Egypt, those were complemented with field visits and screenings of movies and documentaries about issues of interest.

To date, the Green Arm team Conducted 9 Environmental Seminars:

1. The Outcome of the COP15 Negotiations in Copenhagen. 
2. A Tried and Proven Successful New Concept for a Waste Mangement System for Cairo.
3. Air Pollution in Egypt Explained.
4. Biodiversity in Egypt - Experiences in Lake Qarun and a photo exhibition.
5. Biogas for Renewable Energy & Sustainable Development-1
6. Biogas for Renewable Energy & Sustainable Development-2 field  
7. visit.
8. Cycling in Egypt and the Bike Rack Design Competition.
9. Garbage Dreams movie screening and discussion.
10. The Outcome of COP16 Negotiations in Cancun.

3. Spreading a sustainable livelihood culture

In an effort to spread a sustainable livelihood culture, the Green Arm has partnered with Eco-Options Egypt (Donya Dessee), Egypt’s first online website about the environmentally friendly lifestyle options available in Egypt. Eco-Options has provided coverage to Green Arm and Cycling for Change events throughout the year. Moreover, both the Green Arm & Eco-Options have assisted the Egyptian Environmental A¬ffairs Agency in producing animations for environmental awareness.

Our future plans include issuing a yearly booklet about a topic of choice. Each issue has a different theme building on local grassroots knowledge, in an effort to provide the first indigenous environmental publication reaching out to the Egyptian community. 

This year's booklet, to be launched on World Environment day, will inform the community on sustainable mobility options, with a focus on cycling. In parallel, our blog focus on the same topic, providing information and receiving queries.  

Through our publication and campaigns, we aim to create a critical mass of youth that adopt a greener lifestyle in the city and enjoy nature outside of it, aiming to push for the change of laws as youth themselves advocate for policy change through their different channels of participation.

4. Mainstreaming environment into NM activities

Believing in the importance of building on existing capacity, we plan to integrate an environmental axis into social enterprises currently incubated at NM, main-streaming environmental awareness into their programs spread across Egyptian universities. We will start tackling this priority in our second year of operation.