LAUNCHING A NEW INTERNSHIP PROGRAM

We welcome our first cohort of data and graphic design interns to the RISE team. The internship program is centered around analyzing data gaps on the LEEP innovation map and bridging them, identifying data patterns, consolidating data pipelines, and improving communication through data storytelling.

LEVERAGING INNOVATION MAPPING

The RISE team presents at the Startups Without Borders Summit, facilitating a workshop on innovation mapping and its importance in scaling up the impact of social enterprises.

RISE AT COP27 IN SHARM EL SHEIKH

RISE takes part in COP27, showcasing the work done through our flagship initiative, LEEP for Collaborative Impact, on mapping green innovations across Egypt. 

LAUNCHING THE LEEP INNOVATION MAP

Building on the LEEP initiative’s mission of enhancing accessibility to a wealth of community-curated resources and fostering collective intelligence for community driven action, the digital innovation map of Egypt is launched.

INTRODUCING THE LEEP INNOVATION CALENDAR

LEEP’s innovation calendar is launched to offer a communal space for information exchange within the ecosystem, ranging from sector-specific content, to opportunities, grants and events.

Developing Community Data Resources for the LEEP INitiative

In the second half of the year, we build partnerships with key ecosystem players to streamline data pipelines and enhance visibility for two of the LEEP initiative’s technology components - the digital innovation map and the innovation calendar.

THE STANFORD SOCIAL INNOVATION REVIEW RECOGNIzES LEEP

Our LEEP initiative gets recognized as a leading initiative for collective impact globally. Dr Mona Mowafi, RISE’s co-founder and president, presents at the Frontiers of Social Innovation Conference on citizen-led social innovation. Presenting alongside Sanjay Purohit, Chief Curator of Societal Platform in India, the talk reflected on how inclusive collaboration can lead to systems change.

INTERNAL EVALUATION OF THE LEEP PILOT

We use this period to assess and reflect on the LEEP initiative’s pilot as part of planning for organizational growth strategy for the next few years.

DIASPORA OUTREACH & POSITIONING FOR GROWTH

By leveraging the RISE Global Ambassadors Program as well as outreach partnerships, we are activating professionals inside and outside of Egypt to participate in the LEEP community and connect across boundaries through our online/offline platform. RISE Egypt is also investing in boosting its systems and internal resources to position LEEP for growth in 2021.

LEEP Goes Online
with COVID-19

We shift to engaging the LEEP community online, testing our muscles for resiliency and adaptability in a global crisis. We re-imagine our programming and find new ways to establish a shared culture and deepen our bonds as a community.

Monthly Meetups & Platform Development

Community members engage in monthly meetups designed to enable connection, collaboration and knowledge exchange. Development and validation of the mobile app and web-based platform continues.

PILOT LAUNCH AND RETREAT

RISE launches the LEEP pilot with 37 startups from the education and environment sectors, and began testing the prototype of the LEEP for Collaborative Impact platform.

Expanding RISE team

New team members join RISE Egypt to support the launch and pilot of LEEP for Collaborative Impact. HSBC joins as a corporate partner.

DESIGN TESTING AND VALIDATION

We gear up to validate the programming and architecture of LEEP and test assumptions from the early design phase. Field visits and focus groups with social entrepreneurs in different governorates are conducted in recognition that needs outside of Cairo may vary qualitatively and insights from these innovators are thus crucial to the final design of LEEP.

Outreach Playlist

RISE SHARES BEST PRACTICES GLOBALLY

The RISE team is invited to present our work developing LEEP for Collaborative Impact at the Digital Social Innovation (DSI) for European Union (EU) conference in Warsaw, Poland as well as a global data summit entitled ‘Codata: Towards Next-Generation Data Driven Science’ in Beijing, China.

BUILDING A FOUNDATION

RISE team members go on a retreat organized by ElRehla (The Journey), which provides a chance for social innovation ecosystem players to connect, reflect and learn from one another. Meanwhile, we roll up our sleeves to build a master list of social innovators across Egypt as part of the inception of LEEP.

RISE INTRODUCES LEEP FOR COLLABORATIVE  IMPACT

We share our vision of the LEEP for Collaborative Impact Initiative with the world in this first sketch video.

Mapping the Egyptian Social Innovation (SI) ecosystem

We explore technical issues around mapping innovation for sustainable development locally. Organizations that have engaged in mapping diverse sectors in Egypt come together to share knowledge, exchange insights as well as bumps in the road and validate the idea of mapping Egyptian SIs while layering on open data to enable more effective development research and market analysis.

 Post summit: Validating ideas

Ideas such as digitizing a social innovation (DSI) map, centralizing a knowledge hub, and enabling visibility of resources that already exist in the ecosystem (to promote collaboration and avoid replication) are validated and integrated into a unified initiative. LEEP is born.

1st RISE Solutions Summit

Designed as a platform for action, the 1st RISE Solutions Summit is conceived as a space for promoting best practices and knowledge-sharing in the education innovation field while co-creating new ideas for collaboratives that could spin out of the summit.

First class of RISE fellows graduates

The first class of RISE Fellows graduates. We take a step back to evaluate how we can scale our work by leveraging the resources within our global network to impact a wider community of values-aligned social innovators. The idea of 'Solutions Summits' is born.

Global Ambassadors Are a Go

Our Global Ambassadors Program is launched to help expand our presence globally and link Egyptians around the world to opportunities to give back to Egypt in a new, strategic way - through avenues to invest their intellectual and social capital.

IMPACT RESEARCH BEGINS

RISE Research, our think tank arm, kicks off with a 4-year longitudinal impact study of Educate Me’s community school model in Talbaya. It is one of the first studies of its kind in the MENA region and is a testament to a partnership built on years of trust as well as a commitment to integrating global best practices and data for decision-making into the DNA of a social impact startup’s way of doing business.

elevating egypt on the global stage

Committed to elevating Egypt’s success stories on the global stage, we link up with Concordia, a global summit positioned for world leaders, C-Suite professionals, foundation heads and thought leaders, to deliver programming that spotlights the opportunities around entrepreneurship for development in Egypt and the Middle East.

Fellowship Field Accelerator

We sponsor and organize the first Field Accelerator as part of the Fellowship Program, bringing RISE Global Advisors to work directly with fellows on the ground.

Fellowship Global Accelerator

RISE Fellows embark on the program’s first global accelerator across the U.S and Bogota, Colombia, visiting learning partners curated in areas of highest need for each startup in addition to attending cross-cutting workshops and a retreat as a fellowship group to deepen bonds and build a community based on authenticity and genuine exchanges of knowledge and experience.

the RISE Fellowship kicks off

A 2-year journey kicks off for our first flagship program, the RISE Fellowship, with Educate Me, Helm, Jozour, RecycloBekia, and Tahrir Academy.

The OFFICIAL Launch

RISE Egypt officially launches at a conference at Harvard University in Boston, MA.

Launch Event Program
RISE Conference Playlist

grounded in evidence

An expert research advisory group is formed comprised of senior leaders from the Harvard School of Public Health, MIT’s Poverty Action Lab, the Rhode Island School of Design, and AUC’s Social Research Center.

The agenda? How best to design and leverage small-scale impact evaluations and macro-level development data to center our work on integrating innovations for sustainable development.

our 1st Global Accelerator

RISE curates and delivers a global accelerator for the 3 winning teams of EgyptNEGMA’s Impact Egypt! Competition (Helm, Educate Me, and MADAD). The global program in Washington, D.C. and Boston are followed by a retreat in Andover, MA. Deeper bonds are formed reflecting on the inspiring experience together, and brainstorming begins on what will become the RISE Fellowship Program.

RISE egypt is Registered

RISE Egypt, Inc is registered as a global 5013c3 nonprofit in the U.S. (and later with an office in downtown Cairo) and builds an eminent board of directors to guide its vision and strategy for its founding years.

the negma Conference

In 2011, EgyptNEGMA is born, a global conference and social impact competition co-founded on a volunteer basis by a group of Egyptian diaspora professionals, including our founder who served as NEGMA President from 2011-13. Hosted at the famous MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, MA, NEGMA set the stage for catalyzing connections between social innovators on the ground and Egyptian professionals abroad. In 2013, RISE Egypt is founded and partners with NEGMA to design the global accelerator prize for the Impact Egypt! Competition winners.

The SEEDS of RISE

The seeds of RISE go back to 2007 when Mona Mowafi, an Egyptian-American doctoral student at Harvard, came to Egypt to work on the Cairo Urban Inequity Study at the AUC’s Social Research Center. With a passion to build bridges across communities and enable development impact in Egypt, Mona started noticing the immense potential of social innovators on the ground and wondered what more could be done to support them.