In Egypt, two out of five households do not have access to clean drinking water. This reality hit home for fourth-year entrepreneurship student Omar El Araby in December, when he visited the city of Asyut with Enactus Ryerson.
n Egypt, two out of five households do not have access to clean drinking water. This reality hit home for fourth-year entrepreneurship student Omar El Araby in December, when he visited the city of Asyut with Enactus Ryerson.
“We went to a village in Asyut where people dig 20 metres in the ground to get water,” said El Araby, a student at the Ted Rogers School of Management. “The water that comes out is highly contaminated with iron, magnesium, sodium—it’s not drinkable. Farmers and their families drink from it, cook from it, shower from it, clean from it, and a farmer we talked to goes to the hospital every month to remove kidney stones.”
Enactus is a worldwide social entrepreneurship network that seeks to provide innovative, sustainable solutions to the world’s problems. El Araby is the leader of Project Myaah, a new Enactus Ryerson initiative that aims to provide safe drinking water—and a viable revenue stream—to people in Egypt. The team is distributing a mass-produced ceramic water filter system created by local Egyptian artisans, using easily accessible material, for a sustainable solution to the country’s clean-water crisis.
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Photo via Ryerson University.
