Although the school just started recently, the preparation and networking has been going on for many years. Seminars on education, articles in magazins, courses for teachers have conducted to raise awareness about quality education in Egypt. After the recent revolution there is more interest to revamp the education system in Egypt which is traditional with big classrooms and underpaid teachers who make their living by tutoring.
The Nile River School is an attempt to bring quality education to rural Egypt in the spirit of decentralization of education and culture from Cairo. The school hut is on the land of friends and was built on popular demand from the villagers who welcomed us and promised security. The village is of settled Beouins and is a well-knit communal system. We have a local contact who is from the area married to our British teacher fried. He is the key contact between us and the villagers and local authorities.
The villagers offered us to buy land for a proper school building. We have acquired 600sqm in the center of the village not far from the present location. This land will be developed for the new school building. Presently the fence and access road and a small utility hut is under construction.
The next step for the school is to have water source which will be needed before we can do construction. We need to drill a well, install a pump and piping and would like to request funding for this.