I have many updates to write about, let's start with the call of applications and the selected applicants. The project started its phases with call for application for participation. We tried to examine the attitudes of the applicants in the application, we asked about certain issues related to sexuality to know whether the participants will be open to discuss these issues or not and we got different answers, some showed rigid attitude refusing to discuss these taboo, other said they can discuss it within the acceptable societal norms and others showed ability to discuss it freely.

The answers were clear enough to know who will be able to participate and who can not, we set this criterion because Exploring Taboos is not awareness raising training, it is advocacy and technical training and it needs participants with minimum degree of openness about the topic.

Many meetings took place, some between the team of the project to coordinate the tasks and other meetings were held with Rising Voices representative Eddie Avila , who visited Cairo to meet with the three grantees of Rising Voices. In this meeting Eddie informed us about the role of Rising Voices in empowering and supporting its grantees and Nazra team tried to share its ideas and inform Eddie about its plans.

Eddie met three applicants as well, that was important to hear different point of impression about the project, personally I was happy when I met the applicants, although the applications help to know about the applicants , but dialogue is a magical tool to know more about people, I know more about three of our ten participants and I am really happy about what I discovered

We announced the accepted applicants, and we are planning to hold the training this week, we are really in rush not only because we want everything perfect, but we want to settle everything before Ramadan.

Looking forward to start the training in Thursday and looking forward to fruitful discussion.