Friday March 29th, 2024
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Nebny Foundation Faces Eviction

We speak to the group of young, passionate Egyptians who have committed their time to helping Cairo's neediest about their latest predicament - being kicked out of the hub where they've served so many.

Staff Writer

Imagine taking something broken and making a beautiful artifact out of it and then having to risk losing all your hard work just because that someone wants it to remain broken for no reason? That’s kind of what's happening with Nebny Foundation.

Founded by young Egyptians who wanted to make a difference back in 2011, Nebny is all about creating a more humane socio-economic environment for Egyptians who deserve to have their equal rights, living conditions and education secured. In 2012, Cairo’s governor Abdel Kawy Khalifa agreed to issue this group of motivated and driven youth a hospitality decree, allowing them to fix Manshyet Nasser’s rest house and develop it into their site where all the magic happens. Since then, they were able to hold many beneficial activities for the residents of the poor area, including four clothing drives, five medical convoys, enrichment classes for 120 students, illiteracy eradication classes and almost 50,000 Ramadan bags and fast-breaking meals. Nebny also has a “sponsor a child” education program that has succeeded in teaching more than 750 students how to read and write. There are other 28 projects that aid in child development. 

So, what’s the problem now? The government wants the site back. For no solid reason. Legally speaking, they have that right since it was a hospitality decree that could be revoked. However, Nebny has tried for months to get a rental from the government but had no luck with that.

Nebny’s PR Head Mohamed Refaat told us, “all we need right now is as much public support as we can get so that the government would give us a rental contract and we can keep the site that we worked so hard on and made so much progress in. We’re still waiting for any reply.”

If you want to support Nebny, check out their official Facebook page here and spread the hashtags: عاوزين_العقد ‬# سيبوا_مقر_نبنى‬#