Dayma - Revealing Nature's Genius
Dayma are experienced and passionate environmental educators that offer youth rich experiential travel around Egypt.
Our Journey is an enduring experience, a guided discovery of some of Egypt’s most wondrous natural destinations, as well as individuals that embrace sustainable lifestyles and responsible forms of tourism. It is an invitation to tap into Nature’s 3.8 billion years of innovation.
About You
About You
First Name
Sara
Last Name
El Sayed
Twitter URL
@daymajourneys
About Your Organization
Organization Name
Dayma
Organization Website
info.dayma.org
Organization Country
Egypt, QHR, Cairo
Country where this project is creating social impact
Egypt
Age of Innovator
18-34
Gender of Innovator
Female
Is your organization a
Hybrid
How long has your organization been operating?
Less than a year
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Innovation
Name Your Entry
Dayma - Revealing Nature's Genius
Select the stage that best applies to your solution
Start-Up (a pilot that has just begun operating)
How long have you been in operation?
Operating for less than a year
The Need: What problem are you trying to solve?
Education/Innovation: youth in Egypt and arab world are not given tools to be creative and become change makers
Tourism: there is mainly one type of mass tourism in Egypt, and not much is being done on eco-tourism, responsible and educational tourism, there is an need to increase niches to ensure that a variety of tourism exists.
Small scale communities: indigenous people around Egypt are not profiting and benefiting from tourism, they are usually marginalized and actually the government is not encouraging their involvement with tourists.
The Solution: What is your solution? Be specific!
Offering journeys to high schools, universities around Egypt. The journeys offer a triad of experiences, connecting with self (discovering the skills and traits in youth, a develop the ones that are not there) connecting with nature (learning about biomimicry, teaching youth the tools to learn from nature to be able to abstract these principals to sustainable designs) connecting with community, It's a means of building active citizenship, solidarity and sustainable communities. Its more than discovering Egypt, its also about bringing future decision makers to see beyond their immediate surroundings and interests. Finally encouraging the small initiatives, camps and projects of locals to be sustained
The Model: Walk us through a specific example of how your solution makes a difference; include your primary activities
A journey starts at school or university before we travel. The youth is given some reading and research before departing. Youth then travel with us on a journey in a national park in Egypt for a duration of 3-7 days. Youth are guided through several days of activities that include:
Setting up camping sites, hiking, snorkeling, nature observations, science experiments, group activities, team building games, athletics, culture evenings, group discussions, reflections, art activities, alone time, community service, cultural exchanges. The program is meant to be a holistic experience to emmerse the youth in a new surrounding and life.
The program offered takes place in national parks with the experitise of local park rangers, that usually their knowledge is under-utilized, the program is developed in collaboration with local bedouins, camps and teams to empower them to an alternative tourism, but also to inspire educational tourism.
The program encourages being interdisciplinary, therefore youth from different disciplines interact together and learn from each other.
The Marketplace: Who are your peers and competitors? Identify others also working to address the needs you are and what differentiates you from them. What challenges could these players pose to your success or growth?
Wild Guanabana - an adventure group working with youth in Egypt, but their focus is on tourism rather than education, they also work on team building. They also dont work on inspiring youth for innovation and on giving tools at looking at nature.
WESC - is an NGO working on environmental education, the program is based on the needs of the school, so they tailor programs based on the needs of the school. In dayma we have experienced professionals including certified biomimics that are using the expertise and the pool of knowledge of young professionals working in the interdisciplinary field of biomimicry worldwide in collaboration with Biomimicry institute. (biomimicry.net)
Biomimicry south africa - a group that offers similar programs in SA, is constantly collaborating know-how
Social Impact
This Entry is about (Issues)
What solution(s) does your initiative address to help emerging entrepreneurs and small businesses grow and thrive in underserved communities? (select all applicable)
Access to talent, Policy change/advocacy.
What has been the impact of your solution to date?
We have worked with 100 private school youth from 5 countries, who have learnt and been inspired to innovate from nature.
We have worked with 300 public school children on service activities
We have talked about biomimicry to over thousands of people on TV
We have allowed 5 different local entities to have a consistent income, in a time of economic hardships
What is your projected impact over the next 1-3 years?
Working with youth from 10 countries.
Working with over 500 students from private schools and universities
Working with over 1000 youth from public schools and communities around Egypt
Winning entries present a strong plan for how they will achieve and track growth. Identify your six-month milestone for growing your impact
Have worked with over 5 journeys in private Egyptian schools, 2 Egyptian universities and 1 oversea school.
Identify three major tasks you will have to complete to reach your six-month milestone
Task 1
School and university visits and presentations
Task 2
Finalize the new website with the video that shows the unfolding of one journey
Task 3
Train the new staff of newly hired part timers and trainees
Now think bigger! Identify your 12-month impact milestone
Worked with 2 more oversea schools and or universities, have launched our open source knowledge centre on the website
Identify three major tasks you will have to complete to reach your 12-month milestone
Task 1
Made a visit or marketing plan to some arab country/countries
Task 2
Connect with students to gather data about biomimicry to upload onto the open source website
Task 3
developing activities for the journeys
Founding Story: We want to hear about your "Aha!" moment. Share the story of where and when the founder(s) saw this solution's potential to change the world.
When i first heard about the biomimicry professional program and went our our first field trip were i got to experience nature from a different lense, My partner Betty also went to a two week course in Costa Rica in biomimicry. We both fell in love with how biology can be transformed to allow all sorts of people to connect with nature. We were both working on environmental education at the time, but decided that since we both are biologists and have this passion to make people connect with nature, we should start our own company. We tested our first journey alone pooling all our resources, in terms of park rangers, hotels, camps, bedouins and offered our first journey to an international school. The journey was a great success and gave us the push to move forward.
Sustainability
Tell us about your partnerships
ADEF: Arab Digital organization supporting our digital work, including website and open source knowledge
Biomimicry Institute: International organization that is affliated with universities and educational entities
Universities: Private and public universities in Egypt and the arab world.
Schools: Private International Baccalaeauate schools in Egypt - based on giving presentations and word of mouths
Moore and Stefans: Financial and legal auditors - are giving us probono advice until we can start paying them back.
Consultants: Financial advisor, designer and film maker
Please elaborate on any needs or offers you have mentioned above and/or suggest categories of support that aren't specified within the list
Dayma would like to change the face of tourism in Egypt and bring people who value educational tourism and bring them to Egypt to experience a different Egypt, and nature and people
 | 46 weeks ago Sara El Sayed updated this Competition Entry. |
| 47 weeks ago Sara El Sayed updated this Competition Entry. |
| 47 weeks ago Sara El Sayed submitted this idea. |
