Yadaweya is an online handicrafts marketplace serves as a platform for sharing stories about handicrafts artisans in upper Egypt and desert areas in Egypt with customers who value and appreciate the uniqueness of these ethnic traditional crafts. Yadaweya is an online fair trade marketplace that serves as a platform for those interested in discovering Egypt's crafts disadvantages communities and its cultural heritage. we aims to connect (offline) local Egyptian artisans with (online) customers worldwide through spread their stories and products.
Topical focus:
Country:
What locality or neighborhood will your project focus on?
Upper egypt and eastern desert areas
Describe the specific population with whom you will be working.
The artisans or crafts communities in Upper Egypt and Eastern Desert are reach about 5000 individuals, women represented about 60 % of these populations. 90% of these population are not educated or with low level of education ( primary education or low), no computer or communication in most cases, they produce great handicrafts but with no promotion, their communities belong to thousands of years of civilisation with heritage stories for their ancestors, but without appreciation or valuation….we willing to help them to connect them with the world, spread their heritage and stories and link them directly with buyers of their crafts and to promote people to appreciate their stories, skills and heritage in the same time help them to generate income form their crafts sales online.
Who else will be on your team to help implement the project?
Usama Ghazali, twitter.com/yadaweya facebook.com/yadaweya
Saad fatthalla , https://www.facebook.com/saad.fathallah.7?fref=ts
Abdel Baset abd elsalam, https://www.facebook.com/abdelbaset.abdelsalam.1
What kinds of news, stories and other content will be created?
Yadaweya is an online handicrafts marketplace serves as a platform for sharing stories about handicrafts artisans in upper Egypt and desert areas in Egypt with customers who value and appreciate the uniqueness of these ethnic traditional crafts.
Crafts communities through the project team will be able to add their news and updates about their work, products , as we aims to connect (offline) local Egyptian artisans with (online) customers worldwide through spread their stories and products.
images and video for heritage sites which crafts communities live will be shared, videos and images for the artisans communities stories and work.
Also crafts communities will share through help form our team, will share images and news about facilties avilable for visitors to visit their workshops
What technologies and digital tools do you plan to use in the trainings?
Describe the connections that you or your organization have already established or plan to establish that will contribute to the success of the project.
partnership with Red sea national parks association, established in 2013 to help the communities in eastern desert
partnership with Naqada NGOs, in upper Egypt to connect the Upper Egypt crafts through our project
partnership with heritage centre, UNESCO, we planning to do partnership in future to help to document their heritage of these target communities and their ethnic crafts and heritage
How many participants do you think will be trained in your project?
expected number of participants will be trained will be from 150-200 person ( which we work to select a representatives or coordinators for each community to be able to lead the tasks for each communities and help to connect them through the online platform….in the future it expected to increase no of trainees, but in general all communities will directly benefits form the platform services.
Describe which technologies, tools, and media you will focus on when training participants.
mainly the website using PHP language is the main tool, also use Facebook and other social media tools like twitter, pintrest and other ….also blogs for travellers will be used to tell the story of communities and their sites
website is good tools to make it like a documentation site for stories and crafts, also to provide online payments for sellers of crafts, also each community will have a store, part in the website with map of their crafts and heritage sites to be updated periodically with their news and inputs.
our team have good experiences in website development and social media marketing.
Describe the facilities where you will hold the workshops.
the facilities like internet, computer will be mainly in our office who will manage the website, the community will train to use a mobile phones to send photos for their crafts using their mobile phone and also to know about their crafts will be sold, also communities will trained in photography.
What is your current relationship with the community with whom you plan to work? What makes you the most appropriate individual or organization to implement this project?
we work with many communities in desert and upper Egypt since 2001, also for me as a project leader i am awarded the runner-up award of young conservationist award from the international rangers federation and international union for nature, this as results for my efforts along the last 10 years woking with communities and national parks in south and deserts in Egypt. we have good relationship with communities and leaders in different areas.
What specific challenges do you expect to face when planning and implementing your project?
may be some resistance from some people for using technology or understanding the value of online and internet in help them, we will work first with people with more ability to accept this , then when we achieve more success this will help many other to join to benefit from the services will be provided
How will you measure and evaluate the project’s impact, specifically: your primary participants, the wider regional community, or the global digital community?
number of beneficiaries
sales of crafts
level of interaction between crafts communities and visitors or customers of their crafts
stories on website and no of communities
interaction with website and social media channels
If your project were to be selected as a Rising Voices grantee, what would be the general timeline of project activities in 2014?
- travel and meet with communities 1-3 month
– office equipments , month 2
– update and development the website 2-4 month
– training for communities in mobile and photography 3-5
– stories and crafts update on website 4-5
– content update and social media marketing 4-ongoing
Detail a specific budget of up to $2,500 USD for operating costs.
equipment ( computer, camera, internet) 1000
website development and update 800
travel and communities training 700
Besides the microgrant funding, what other support can Rising Voices provide for your project to ensure its success?
networking and media coverage in global scale
Contact name
usama ghazali
Organization
konoz yadaweya
