Entrepreneurs in Egypt: Mohamed Omar

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 In News

Young entrepreneurs in Egypt are part of a new wave of self-employment sweeping the nation, and Mostafa Shahat writes about them.


The tremendous effects of social entrepreneurship on Egyptian communities’ have encouraged young people – especially after the Egyptian revolution in 2011 – to initiate social enterprises and NGOs that support their communities. They gain experiences in the community development field and increase their patriotism and feeling of ownership towards their home country.

Mohamed Omar, young Egyptian entrepreneur and real change-maker who, at early age, has founded several social enterprises to help his community and utilise his leadership skills to benefit society. Mohamed studied at the Faculty of Agriculture, Cairo University in 2012, and he is a certified professional trainer by the SCE (School of Continuing Education) at AUC (American University in Cairo).

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While Mohamed was a student, he was selected president of U-Turn, student organization that helps youth become qualified for the job market by offering career development and soft skills trainings as well providing support and guidance for the students who would like to run their own social enterprises. U-Turn alumni volunteered incareer coaching for prep and high school students so they can find their passion and desire field at early age.

Mohamed has co-founded E-Youth, ‘Engaging and Empowering Egyptian Youth’, with Alaa Obeida. E-youth is an initiative developed by a highly-motivated group of Egyptian youth that instills best practices in decision-making and social entrepreneurship among young Egyptians.

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E-Youth conducts social entrepreneurship annual conferences where they gather all the entrepreneurs who attended camps and trainings with E-youth during the year to present their ideas and be rewarded with grants.

‘Despite being a small group of young people, we reached to many young Egyptians who believed that their efforts and contributions to their society matter, and they want to start their own social enterprises and/or NGOs to support their community’, says Mohamed.

Because of his excellent leadership, Mohamed was awarded a scholarship funded by the US Department of State to travel to the US to visit many local youth organizations and to exchange knowledge and experiences as well as the E-Youth success story.

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Mohamed was also selected as a fellow at the Student Leadership Discovery Program, which is an eight-month programme with personal and leadership development activities for students from Egyptian public universities.

In 2015, Mohamed joined AMENDS (The American Middle Eastern Network for Dialogue at Stanford), where he presented E-Youth’s contributions to the social entrepreneurship Ecosystem in Egypt. Mohamed used to work as Senior Program Coordinator at Soliya, where he was running several online exchange programmes, and he is currently working as Regional Program Coordinator at Search for Common Ground.


Article submitted by Mostafa Shahat, the volunteer responsible for Arabic guest bloggers in the MENA region and an entrepreneur who has established one of the most successful youth communities in Egypt, Goal Oriented Learners. Mostafa studied social entrepreneurship in USA and is currently the Middle East & North Africa representative at StudySearch (Nigeria) and the Egypt representative for All Events in City (India). Mostafa is also a reporter at Nudge Sustainability Hub. Email him at mshahat@golteam.org and check out his other blog A Syrian’s Success in Egypt and more from his Entrepreneurs in Egypt series.


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