After attending the two international workshops of DEDI Green Gate project, Danish Tamar Bashary and Egyptian Manar Ramadan have no doubts when it comes to their new friendships being uniqe.
By Petra Hass
Looking back, Manar Ramadan and Tamar Bashary reflect on the journey they joined together with the 18 other participants.
“It has been so interesting to see all the projects and all the workshops, but what made the biggest impression was actually the other participants. It was so inspiring to be this many people gathered with the same ideas about the world and the same desires,” Tamar Bashary says.
Manar Ramadan agrees. Before attending the workshops, Manar Ramadan was looking forward to meeting other sustainable entrepreneurs who worked with other aspects of sustainability than herself.
Manar Ramadan and her colleague Ahmed Yassin weighted the total amount of plastic collected by the DEDI Green Gate participants during the DEDIxBanlastic Beach Clean-up in Alexandria. photo by Banlastic
“I wanted to be a part of this project to meet like-minded people who are working with sustainability from different perspectives than I do,” she says.
Manar Ramadan is one of three co-founders of Banlastic, an organization advocating for a ban on single use plastic and offering alternatives to single use plastic.
Holistic approach
Tamar Bashary also applied to get inspiration and learn more, as she wishes to bring more sustainability into her field of work. Being a board member of MINO UNG Aarhus, an organization that works for strengthening the voice of minorities in the public debate, sustainability isn’t on the agenda. But Tamar Bashary wishes to change this.
Tamar Bashary in conversation with Youhana Nassif, Ahmed Yassin and Carly Brand. The friendships and new networks Tamar Bashary created during the two workshops is something she values deeply. Photo by Rowan El Shimi
“I applied with the purpose of learning more about sustainability and urban agriculture, in order to incorporate some of the principles into the work of MINO,” she says.
After visiting initiatives and organizations both in Egypt and Denmark, Tamar Bashary now has new knowledge to bring to the table at MINO.
“The most inspiring was to see how Very Nile integrates the local community as part of the solutions. It is so important to have a holistic approach to sustainability. Sustainability is not only about collecting plastic from the Nile. It is also about considering the social context,” Tamar says.
The green future
The 2021 round of DEDI Green Gate project has ended bynow, but the young entrepreneurs still have a lot of work to do.
”Meeting the Egyptian grass root organizations has definitely encouraged me to do more activist work. But in a way it has also left me feeling overwhelmed and powerless because I have realized how hard it is,” Tamar Bashary says.
“Still, when participating in a project like DEDI Green Gate you also realize, that you share the feeling of frustration with many others.”
