In Misr el Qadeama, Mokattam, Haggana, Saft El Laban, Mansheit Nasser, El Shrouk in Bany Swif, Maghagha in El Menya, El Hoad in Alexandria and many other cities and districts in Egypt, poverty is increasing, illiteracy is escalating, and diseases are spreading. This is all accompanied by increasing passivity from the fortunate, who can really help…who can really educate…and who can really defend the rights of the powerless.

In Alashanek ya Balady for Sustainable Development (AYB-SD), we discovered that the real value of life is in the eyes of the poor. Do you know why? Because those poor, who live on one and half pounds per day, always smile, in spite of the fact that they do not have the mobiles, cars, apartments and education we have. We really learned from them that we should thank God… we learned that we should be patient enough, because we are better than 50% of the Egyptian society and one third of the world, who live under the poverty line.

The idea started in 2002, when group of students from the American University in Cairo (AUC), Cairo University, and Ain Shams University gathered to found Alashanek ya Balady Association run by students. Those students valued the term "development", because they did not want to just give money, food or blankets for the poor and leave them after that. They wanted transformation, empowerment, and real change. The dream got bigger, and those founding students graduated and established Alashanek ya Balady Association for Sustainable Development as a formal non-governmental organization. They are even now replicating the model of development and encouraging other organizations to do development more than charity.

We knew the value of life… we knew the meaning of love and heart… And in spite of our education, we discovered that the real knowledge is in experiencing the real problems of our country; the thing we call “a life-time experience”.