Laila Iskander | |
---|---|
Minister of Urban Development | |
In office 17 June 2014 –19 September 2015 | |
President | Abdel Fattah el-Sisi |
Prime Minister | Ibrahim Mahlab |
Preceded by | N.A. |
Minister of Environment [1] | |
Succeeded by | Khaled Fahmy [2] |
Laila Rashed Iskander Kamel is an Egyptian social entrepreneur and politician. She is formerly Egypt's Minister of State for Environment Affairs in the interim government of Prime Minister Hazem El Beblawi. [3] [4]
Dr. Iskander has been working with Egyptian grassroots organizations for over 20 years. She acts as chairperson and founding board member of CID Consulting –an Egyptian consulting firm that "strives to create holistic growth solutions by bridging corporate and developmental objectives"[ clarification needed ]. [5] She is well recognized internationally and locally as a consultant,researcher,and trainer in community development. [6] Laila Iskander is also a trustee at Alfanar,the first venture philanthropy organization in the Arab Region.
Dr. Iskander studied Economics,Political Science and Business at Cairo University. She acquired a Master of Arts in Teaching with a specialization in Near Eastern Studies from the University of California,Berkeley and later acquired a Doctorate of Education from the Teacher's College at Columbia University in New York. [7]
Iskander has worked as researcher,speaker and consultant with governmental and international agencies as well as with the private sector in the fields of gender,education and development,environment,child labor and governance. Her consultation work encompasses grass roots' issues and policy matters. She also served as consultant to the Egyptian Minister of Environment on waste management. [6]
Over the past 25 years,Iskander has worked on projects in “…institutional building,network creation,institution of public-private partnerships,and technology transfer…”in the fields of non-formal education,primary health care,community environmental issues,crafts,literacy and gender,among others. [6] She also served as a jury member to UNESCO's International Literacy Prize and acted as UNESCO's UNLD Resource Person for the Arab region between 2005 and 2007. [6]
Dr. Laila also has a long track record and expertise in the area of formal and non-formal education techniques,and had managed several projects in this area in Egypt [8]
Iskander sits on the Board of Trustees of the International Institute for Environment and Development. [9]
She is also member of the executive team of collaborative working group on solid waste management in low- and middle-income countries,better known as CWG –an informal knowledge network that brings together volunteers to share knowledge on solid waste management methods in developing countries. [10]
On being a social entrepreneur,Iskandar stated that:
The term 'social entrepreneur', I think, requires re-visiting. I would like to advise anyone embarking on a career or a changing path to look at business as an enterprise that must include people’s well-being all around. Not just me and my company or my NGO and the money we’re gonna make. So enterprises must be fair, equitable, just...my advice is that for us to challenge the definitions of what entrepreneurship is, what profit is. I must not just look at the money at the end of my annual statement. I must look at the well-being of everybody around me because we live in one planet...and if we continue to look at grabbing things and doing well by ourselves, it’s not going to be sustainable...You must examine the whole concept of business and profit from an angle that says: if it’s not social, then it’s bad business. [11]
— Laila Iskander, Interview with Global X
Dr. Iskander acted as Director and Lead Author of the Business Solutions for Human Development Report 2007 on Egypt. [12] In 1994, she authored a book titled Mokattam garbage village, Cairo, Egypt.
Dr. Iskander's contributions include her notable work with the zabbaleen or garbage collectors, in Egypt, where she established an informal recycling school in 1982 to teach children basic literacy, health and hygiene [13] - a project for which she received the Goldman Environmental Prize in 1994. [14]
Her work with the garbage collectors includes a "learning and earning" rug-weaving program ("Kamel’s Rug-Weaving Center"), in which girls from the zabbaleen community weave rugs on a hand-loom using discarded cotton. The project integrated an educational program to teach the girls basic math and literacy and facilitated the sale of their rugs at handicraft fairs for profit. [14]
The know-how of waste management in Manshiyat Naser on the outskirts of Cairo was transferred to the Egyptian tourist towns of Dahab and Nuweiba in 1997, [14] when Kamel cooperated with social entrepreneur Sherif El-Ghamrawy – eco-lodge owner and founder of environmental protection organization "Hemaya" (Arabic for "Protection"). [15] The project involved separating and dividing organic and non-organic waste and delivering non-organic waste to a sorting and processing transfer station to be re-used and recycled; organic waste was delivered to Sinai Bedouin who used it to feed their cattle, thus preventing environmental degradation caused by unorganized waste disposal methods. [16]
The processing transfer station was established to absorb the large volume of alcohol bottles, plastic, cardboard and other recyclable materials from tourism establishments and provide a healthy source of income from the re-sale of plastics and glass both locally and internationally. [15]
In 1994, Dr. Iskander received the Goldman Environmental Prize for her early work with the zabbaleen [14]
At the World Economic Forum in Sharm el-Sheikh in 2006, she and her organization – CID Consulting – received the Schwab Award for Social Entrepreneurship for their design and implementation of a "learning and earning" project for children of the zaballeen with fast-moving consumer goods Procter & Gamble Egypt.[ citation needed ]
Saint Simon the Tanner, also known as Saint Simon the Shoemaker, is the Coptic Orthodox saint associated with the story of the moving the Mokattam Mountain in Cairo, Egypt, during the rule of the Muslim Fatimid Caliph al-Muizz Lideenillah (953–975) while Abraham the Syrian was the Pope of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria.
The British University in Egypt is a private Egyptian university in El Shorouk City, Cairo, Egypt. Founded in September 2005, through an inter-governmental agreement, it provides a British education style and awards degrees validated by its partner UK universities and the Egyptian Supreme Council of Universities.
A waste picker is a person who salvages reusable or recyclable materials thrown away by others to sell or for personal consumption. There are millions of waste pickers worldwide, predominantly in developing countries, but increasingly in post-industrial countries as well.
The Zabbaleen is a word which literally means "garbage people" in Egyptian Arabic. The contemporary use of the word in Egyptian Arabic is to mean "garbage collectors". In cultural contexts, the word refers to teenagers and adults who have served as Cairo's informal garbage collectors since approximately the 1940s. The Zabbaleen are also known as Zarraba, which means "pig-pen operators." The word Zabbalīn came from the Egyptian Arabic word zebāla which means "garbage".
Ayman Zohry is a demographer/geographer and expert on migration studies based in Cairo, Egypt. He was born in Souhag, Egypt. Zohry received his Ph.D. from the University of Sussex in 2002. He is a leading researcher in the field of migration studies in Egypt with a special focus on irregular migration.
The Mokattam, also known as the Mukattam Mountain or Hills, is the name of an Eastern Desert plateau as well as the district built over it in the Southern Area of Cairo, Egypt.
Garbage Dreams is a 2009 feature length documentary film produced and directed by Mai Iskander. Filmed over the course of four years, Garbage Dreams follows three teenage boys growing up in Egypt's garbage village. Garbage Dreams aired on the PBS program Independent Lens for the occasion of Earth Day 2010 and has been screened in many international film festivals.
Marina of the Zabbaleen is a 2008 documentary film written and directed by Engi Wassef that examines the life of Marina, a 7-year-old Egyptian girl living in a Zabbaleen garbage-collecting village in Cairo. The film debuted at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival with sold-out screenings. The film piqued the interest of many movie goers with its poignant tagline, "Garbage and God are the only options: plight of Christians peasants in Cairo."
Egypt's environmental problems include, but are not limited to, water scarcity, air pollution, damage to historic monuments, animal welfare issues and deficiencies in its waste management system.
Melek Hassan Tourhan was the second wife of Sultan Hussein Kamel of Egypt. After her husband ascended the throne in 1914, she became known as Sultana Melek.
Amr Waked is an Egyptian film, television and stage actor. He is best known to international audiences and in Hollywood for his role in the 2005 film Syriana. Other prominent roles include a Yemeni sheikh called Muhammad in Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, Pierre Del Rio in Luc Besson's Lucy and Farouk Hassan in Ramy.
Laila Takla is a Coptic Egyptian politician, author, and promoter of positive Muslim-Christian relations. Together with Saba Pasha Habachy, she founded International Legal Consultants Egypt in 1977.
Bothaina Kamel is an Egyptian television anchor, activist, and politician. A long-time pro-democracy advocate, particularly in Shayfeencom, her professional career has been marked by repeated conflict with authorities. In June 2011 she announced her candidacy for the Egyptian presidency, although she did not receive enough signatures to make the ballot. She announced on 12 April 2014 that she would run in the 2014 presidential election though she was unable to collect enough endorsements to run.
Hesham Mohamed Qandil is an Egyptian engineer and civil servant who was Prime Minister of Egypt from 2012 to 2013. Qandil was appointed as prime minister by President Mohamed Morsi on 24 July 2012 and sworn in on 2 August 2012. Qandil previously served as Minister of Water Resources and Irrigation from 2011 to 2012.
The cabinet of Egyptian Prime Minister Hesham Qandil was sworn in on 2 August 2012. Qandil was appointed by President Mohamed Morsi, following the resignation of military-named premier Kamal Ganzouri. The cabinet consists of 36 ministers. The composition of the government is mostly formed by technocrats, with five Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) members and one member each from the Al-Wasat and Renaissance parties.
Mostafa Hussein Kamel Ahmed Mostafa is the former Egyptian Minister of State for Environmental Affairs. He was sworn into Prime Minister Hesham Qandil's cabinet, the Qandil Cabinet, on 2 August 2012, following the 2011–2012 Egyptian revolution that deposed President Hosni Mubarak, retaining his position from former Prime Minister Kamal Ganzouri's interim government. He was one of the independent ministers in the cabinet.
Laila Shereen Sakr, known by her moniker, VJ Um Amel, is an Egyptian–American digital media theorist and artist. She is the founder of the digital lab, R-Shief, Inc., an Annenberg Fellow, and Assistant Professor of Media Theory & Practice at University of California, Santa Barbara, where she founded the Wireframe digital media studio.
Food waste recycling is a process to convert food waste into useful materials and products for achieving sustainability of the environment. Food waste is defined as all parts of food, inedible and edible, created before, during, and after food processing, production, and consumption. Greenhouse gases, especially methane can be reduced by food waste recycling. Food waste recycling can also alleviate the saturation of landfill sites in Hong Kong.
Bahiga Hafez was an Egyptian screenwriter, composer, director, editor, producer and actress.
In Egypt, waste and lack of proper management of it pose serious health and environmental problems for the country and its population. There has been some governmental attempts to better the system of waste management since the 1960s but those have not proven sufficient until now. In the last 10 years focus e attempts at recycling are present, and growing in the country. But these are largely informal or private actors, and government initiatives are necessary to properly manage these systems and provide them with appropriate resources.