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The United Nations Population Fund in Egypt, in cooperation with the National Council for Women and the Norwegian Embassy, launched the “Innovative Incubator for Social Entrepreneurship” in Upper Egypt, to employ innovative community solutions and translate them into a number of projects on the ground.
This phase of the incubator targets Luxor Governorate and its neighboring governorates in southern Egypt. Three introductory workshops were carried out in the presence of representatives from 21 NGOs from various Luxor centers, and 40 young men and women, including male and female volunteers from the Anti-Violence Unit at Luxor University.
A report by the United Nations News Bulletin correspondent in Egypt stated that some of the introductory seminars were held at the Innovative Incubator for Social Entrepreneurship in Upper Egypt in Luxor Governorate. The Innovative Incubator for Social Entrepreneurship aims to provide technical and material support to young people, workers in the field of development, and social entrepreneurs of both genders to develop innovative solutions. Takes into account the societal context.
  The project provides opportunities to design and implement creative solutions to development challenges relevant to the work of UNFPA, says Dalia El-Nazer, Director of the Fund’s Upper Egypt Social Entrepreneurship Project:
“This is the first innovative incubator for social entrepreneurship to be implemented in Luxor Governorate in partnership between the National Council for Women and the United Nations Population Fund. Through this incubator, young entrepreneurs of both genders are supported to start projects that contribute to solving societal problems and issues in cooperation with civil society institutions that She works to find solutions to societal problems, especially the harmful practices facing girls.”
She added that this does not mean being limited to issues that concern girls and women only, but she stressed the importance of projects that focus on both genders and supporting them financially and technically. She said: "We explain to them how to manage their financial and human resources and train them on how to develop a marketing plan and build an integrated work team. At that stage, we aim to reach fifteen emerging ideas that will form the nucleus of the innovative incubator for social entrepreneurship."
Professor Sherine Al-Najjar, a member of the National Council for Women in Luxor Governorate, says that three introductory workshops and introductory sessions about the incubator were held at the headquarters of the National Council in Luxor over the course of two days, attended by a number of young men and women, representatives of civil society organizations, and male and female volunteers at the Unit for Combating Violence against Women at Luxor University. Professor Sherine Al-Najjar went on to say:
“These seminars and workshops held by the innovative incubator promote the idea of women’s economic empowerment through projects that contribute to solving their societal problems and generate sustainable income for them.”
Representatives of twenty-one civil society organizations from the various centers of Luxor Governorate benefit from the innovative incubator. These associations will work to create a number of projects that contribute to solving societal problems that Luxor society suffers from, as Professor Samir Hegazy, head of the Regional Federation of Associations in the governorate, says:
“We are in the process of organizing workshops to teach women and youth how to create productive projects such as mushroom projects, spinning and weaving, Nubian handicrafts, and bee honey, and the union will continue to organize these seminars in support of youth and women.”
Professor Abdel Ati Ali Ahmed, President of the East Railway Community Development Association in Luxor, said in his response to a question about how the association benefits and applies the idea of an innovative incubator for social entrepreneurship and transforms it into community projects:
“We work through the association to identify societal problems in the railway area in Luxor, then young men and women translate these problems into projects that generate profits and income that contribute to solving those problems. We are now collecting project ideas and after settling on them, young men and women are trained on how to implement them through training courses and workshops.” He worked for six months, and then we started implementing projects on the ground.”
  During one of the introductory sessions about the innovative incubator, Fatima Hussein, a young woman from Luxor Governorate, said and expressed her happiness in response to a question about the extent to which she benefited from that incubator and how that was translated into the form of a project that helps her and her family:
“I love the profession of knitting, and I did not realize the importance of this introductory session and the workshops organized by the innovative incubator, but after I attended some of these workshops, they helped me a lot in how to increase my income with a good marketing mechanism for my products, and I received great encouragement from those around me, and I will spare no effort in striving towards Best to create a happy home for me and my children.”
The Innovative Incubator for Social Entrepreneurship aims to stimulate positive social change by providing a supportive environment, financial resources, technical consultations, and networking opportunities for young men and women with ideas for innovative projects that address societal problems such as harmful practices against girls and women in Upper Egypt.