AUC students first in Egypt to be selected as Dalai Lama Fellows

Two engineering at the American University in Cairo (AUC) are the first Egyptians to be selected as Dalai Lama fellows for the year 2012.  Bassma Taher, a construction engineering major and Samar Sultan, a mechanical engineering major, each won  $4,500 for their project, Kaab Dayer which means walking long distances all day which is very tiring. The Kaab Dayer objective is to empower underprivileged people in the greater Cairo community by providing them with training in a specialized craft.  Both students will travel to attend the Global Learning Community Institute in California from June 17 to 24, along with other awardees, to present their project.

The initiative is a result of a partnership between AUC’s John D. Gerhart Center for Philanthropy and Civic Engagement and Dalai Lama Fellows organization. The selection process for the fellows was managed by a committee headed by Barbara Ibrahim, director of the Gerhart Center, and Nelly Corbel, AUC-based civic engagement manager. Corbel will coach the two winning students throughout the implementation process of their project. Taher and Sultan, who initially met at the 2010 Women to Women conference in Boston, are expected to complete their project in three years.

Dalai Lama Fellows is a nonprofit organization based in San Francisco that has the unprecedented authorization of the 14th Dalai Lama to award fellowships and project grants in his name, with mentoring and coaching components. The organization cooperates with various educational institutions, including Princeton, Stanford and McGill universities. Fellows are immersed in a yearlong secular, contemplative leadership curriculum that emphasizes mindfulness, compassion, ethics, systematic thinking and project management.

The compassion-in-action projects that are designed and launched by students as part of the Dalai Lama Fellowship initiative are required to address environmental sustainability, violence mitigation, interfaith/intercultural cooperation, or poverty. With Assistant Professor Ayman Ismail as their faculty mentor, Sultan and Taher focused their project on the production of leather goods.

“The idea behind our project is to revive the industry of producing leather shoes and bags, which is in decline due to the lack of qualified labor,” said Taher, “we called our project Kaab Dayer toassure to our customers that our shoes can afford long distances and it will live long.”Taher and Sultan plan to establish a factory in Ain Al Sira, one of the poorest areas in Cairo, and intend to make use of qualified labor to train unemployed youth in the area. “There are many unemployed people in Ain Al Sira because of the absence of localized businesses and low wages,” Taher noted.

Sultan added that one anticipated outcome of the project will be enhanced civic engagement among their peers. Through their initiative, Taher and Sultan believe that they can revive a diminishing industry, create job opportunities and spread a sense of social responsibility among their fellow students. “We are encouraging university students from fields such as accounting, marketing, human resources, finance, branding and technical supervision to join us as interns in the factory,” Sultan said. “They will gain work experience, receive internship certificates from the factory and become more engaged citizens of Egypt.”