Iskandar Laila
Organization: CID Consulting
Year Founded: 1995
Country: Egypt
Website: www.cid.com.eg
Geographic Area of Impact: Egypt.
Model: Social Business
Focus: Education,Enterprise Development,Environment.
Social Entrepreneur of the Year, Egypt, 2006 Schwab Fellow of the World Economic Forum VideoVideo Interview The Innovation On the outskirts of Cairo sits Mokattam Hills where the Zabbaleen –or garbage people – live. The streets are heaped high with solid waste. But the huge piles have been sorted into plastics, textiles, and glass. Greater Cairo’s 60,000 Zabbaleen, a Coptic Christian community of formerly landless and unemployed peasants who migrated to the capital 50 years ago, gather one third of the city’s 14,000 tons of daily garbage. Laila Iskandar has worked with the Zabbaleen since 1982, introducing innovative social and environmental initiatives that have included recycling as much as 80% of the inorganic waste into raw materials and manufactured goods – plastics, rugs, pots, paper and glass. As a result, garbage collectors have begun to break the cycle of poverty. Iskandar’s work with the Zabbaleen first began when she started an informal school focused on learning in the context of recycling. Because Zabbaleen children used to accompany their fathers in their garbage collection sojourns, she designed school attendance timing to fit with their needs. With an emphasis on health and hygiene, the curriculum was shaped to help the children deal with their surroundings. In 1988, Iskandar became the Field Director for the Rag Recycling Center at the Association for the Protection of the Environment, pioneering multiple initiatives with the Zabbaleen community. One such initiative involved over 200 Zabbaleen households that bring organic waste to a neighborhood composting plant that then turns the waste into high-grade compost for agricultural use. Another involves girls from the community who are reviving the most ancient of Egyptian crafts, weaving on a handloom made from discarded cotton remnants. The “earning and leaning” project teaches them basic math and literacy, and the earnings are divided among the aspiring weavers. Iskander has stimulated many such creative endeavors designed to combine learning, income generation and waste recycling. To date, CID has benefits over 15,000 urban poor with its water and sanitation projects, housing improvement projects, crafts projects, primary health care and literacy projects. Background Cairo has become one of the largest cities in the world with a population of fifteen million and growing at a rate of almost one million every eight months. As a result, basic services especially the collection and disposal of waste, are severely strained. The Zabbaleen are an industrious people and have been able to create work from waste for thousands of low-income residents. But their living conditions continued to be deplorable, and as the population continued to rapidly increase, the Zabbaleen were increasingly unable to meet the garbage collection requirements. In addition, they lacked the resources, the political organization and the vision to expand their economic opportunities and protect their own interests. Iskandar’s efforts have focused on linking productive work with environmental sustainability in poor urban environments, including those inhabited by the Zabbaleen. Strategy Iskandar founded CID in 1995 based on her experience with the Zabbaleen. She was joined by four other partners equally committed to environmental sustainability and poverty elimination. CID is a for-profit organization that seeks to link the private, government and non-profit sectors to achieve sustainable development while building the capacities of its clients. CID works with local and international partners and clients and uses a multidisciplinary and multicultural approach. CID seeks to link the poverty sector with the business sector to create sustainable, viable business partnerships where people and organizations learn together. Non-formal and adult learning are linked to all aspects of CID’s work while issues of marginalization are brought into the arena of business solutions. Since its inception, CID has planned and implemented projects around on-site rural sanitation, crafts production for rural women, low cost housing improvement projects for rural communities and institutional building for grass roots communities organized through non profits and working with municipalities to improve environmental conditions in Upper Egypt. CID works with communities to set up sustainable waste recycling programs and education for development, beginning in the Moqattam area and expanding to Minia and Sinai. Thus, CID promotes efforts that create jobs while improving sanitary conditions. To do so, it has had to overcome many barriers, including bureaucratic and disciplinary mindsets. For example, waste management has traditionally been perceived by town planners, waste management specialists and engineers as a technology, management and engineering issue. Few municipalities and ministries in charge of waste management have perceived garbage to be an issue where consumers have to be involved in crafting sustainable responses. CID highlights how the reality of megacities, particularly in emerging markets, must place people at the center of waste management planning. The Entrepreneur Laila Iskandar’s background includes studies in economics, political science and business in Cairo as well as Near-Eastern studies and International Education Development at U.C. Berkeley and Teachers’ College at Columbia University. Her voluntary work with the nonprofit sector led her to recognize the limits of working through NGO’s to realize a bigger dream of scaling up, professionalizing and turning practice into policy. The performance driven, efficiency aspect and quick response of the business sector led her to set up CID as a company rather than a non-profit institution.
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