Students, researchers, employees and housewives participated in a Citizen Journalism Workshop held by ICFJ in Egypt. The goal was to transform each trainee from being the typical passive viewer to becoming an active, interacting participant who partakes in the coverage of events.

Ola Al-Fooli, a housewife and participant of the citizen journalism workshop hosted by ICFJ in Egypt, documents her reasoning behind joining the workshop. She explains how her passion for writing and journalism led her to participating in the workshop and how it has transformed her life and drastically improved her writing skills and investigative journalistic techniques.

All over Cairo, an abundance of single, desperate, poor women roam the streets searching for hope. Unable to work, survived by their late husbands left to fend for themselves, these women are forced to confront the daily challenge of survival. These women gather up what little supplies they have, namely poultry and cottage cheese, and head to a market to sell these commodities for less-than-market value. These stories, along with the changing perception of the working woman, combine to provide this captivating story of Um Hassan, just one of many such elderly women.

A Tuk Tuk is a motor vehicle and a mode of transport for private use and as a vehicle for hire. It is a motorized 3-wheeled cabin cycle, operated by a single individual. This individual is oftentimes not over the age of 14 in rural Egypt. The owners pay the children a small fraction of their daily labor costs and, naturally as children, they treat these machines like big toys. Racing and improper driving ensue, and thus become a major cause for child safety. As one local Professor explains: “The reason behind child labor is the breakdown of the family due to divorce, separation of the parents or one of the parents leaving. This is in addition to poverty and the poor economic situation, as well as a lack of public awareness about the importance of education, which leads to the trade-off between child work and school.”