Our educational system remains at the bottom of global and regional rankings and this led to the fact that most youth in the country is deprived of a skills-based education for a less practical and very much less effective rote-memorization type of learning. We believe that changing the mindsets of these young people at a very early age will enable them to know where they’re standing exactly once social entrepreneurship becomes their profession. As an inclusive platform for social entrepreneurship and innovation, IbtikarKhana believes in the cruciality of an early intervention where key players and stakeholders in the ecosystem should work together to encourage children and young adults to think out of the box while spreading and promoting concepts of innovation and social entrepreneurship.

Abqarino goals:

1- Feed and foster the innovative and creative qualities of children and young adults: Creating role models among young adults and children to encourage others to think out of the box through exposing them to the concepts of social innovation and creativity and enabling them with the know-how how to design and submit innovative entrepreneurial initiatives.

2- Start a movement for empowering children and young changemakers and celebrating their success: Enhancing the dialogue, networking and collaboration among different stakeholders, key players, policy makers, experts, media and the public to start urging the promotion of the social entrepreneurship culture among children and young adults through involving them as partners in the competition, starting an open dialogue to share the learnings, challenges and opportunities and exploring ways of collaboration.

3- Support community based innovative solutions: Equipping entrepreneurial children and young adults with the basic skills and know-how to design and implement their initiative through providing the winners with initial seed-fund, technical support and mentorship.

In 2020, IbtikarKhana organized its first Abqarino competition targeting children and young adults between 10 to 18 years from all over Egypt.

The competition had three themes: reviving tourism in Egypt after covid-19, sustaining the community support provided to the society's most vulnerable groups amidst covid-19 and enhancing the learning environment to improve online and distance learning experiences for students in Egypt.

More than 400 young adults and children applied from all over Egypt. 15 applicants from 6 governorates were chosen to join the training program and were offered 10 training days in addition to individual monitoring sessions. After the trainings, the 15 changemakers pitched their idea in front of a panel of experts and 3 won and were awarded seed-funding.