Ms. Yosr Gado, Head of Non-Formal Education Programmes - British Council Egypt was NileFM's guest on "The Big Breakfast" with Rob and Nadine, and she told us all about&nbsp;the importance of Non-Formal Education and how the British Council in Egypt is fostering leadership, inclusion, and social responsibility among young people, while also addressing the needs of underrepresented groups such as women and people with disabilities.
What do Non-Formal Education Programmes mean?&nbsp;
Non-Formal Education as the name implies, is something that is not in the classroom or the university. It's the subtle way of providing young people with skills needed for their lives, to thrive within their communities and their societies.
Youth are often at the forefront of societal change, how does the British Council in Egypt connect with and inspire young people to take action or participate in Non-Formal Education&nbsp;Programmes?
The youth represent around 60 percent of our population, so our mission as The British Council is to empower Egyptian youth and equip them with the right transferable skills to thrive within their societies, and to lead the positive change they want to see within their communities.
We work across different sectors, education, non-formal education, creative economy, arts, and English, so we have a diverse offer that can support young people in their societies to thrive and meet global challenges.
Could you give us an example of one of the projects that you've been&nbsp;working on recently?
We have for example a programme for Non-Formal Education called "Youth Connect" and it's a global programme but we have our tailored version here in Egypt, where we implemented it with&nbsp;Civil society actors, we work with communities&nbsp;governmental sectors, we partner with officials partners such as the Ministry of Youth and Sports.
Inclusion is a key value for many organizations today, how does your work under Non-Formal Education ensure that inclusion, especially of women, people with disabilities, or other underrepresented groups?
We try to practice what we preach, we adapt our cultural relations approach to building understanding and trust between different stakeholders within any community we work with.
Our approach or the way we work is built around community engagement, and support the young leaders in their community-identified issues, so&nbsp;not working in silos and working collaboratively within our communities is our main target.&nbsp;
What are the strategies or partnerships that the British Council has taken to&nbsp;empower women through its work under Non-Formal Education?
At the British Council empowering women is mandatory in all our programmes.
We do this by planning for this before we work, all our outputs and objectives are both gender and inclusive, and we study carefully how the impact of our work is going to have on our societies specifically people with disabilities and women.&nbsp;
The solutions that come from young leaders are usually inclusive as well, it doesn't have to be something that focuses on women, but whatever we are implementing we need to consider how this will affect different and diverse people, specifically women and people with disabilities.
We allocate different resources even within the implementation, we provide technical support to young people to ensure that they tackle the issues sensitively And professionally when it comes to women and people with disabilities.
Can you share some examples of the initiatives or success stories where youth have played a leading role?
Whatever we're doing we are promoting social leadership which indicates that the youth adopting both social responsibility and intercultural dialogue, to do the things that they are doing with understanding and triangulating the relationship between their community and their action&nbsp;and their issues.&nbsp;
We have several examples where young leaders work with marginalized communities with illiterate women, for example, work on waste management, or produce products that can be&nbsp;resold again, which gives them skills in other fields so they can continue with their lives.&nbsp;
How is it possible to join the programmes that you do?&nbsp;
We have different approaches one of them is an open call where people are encouraged to participate, and we don't have standards, it's non-academic, so if you want to contribute to positive change within your community, please join us.&nbsp;
Also, we make sure that you are&nbsp;committed to the journey because it's not a workshop that will take four days and off you go, you have all the skills you need. It's like a complete journey. It could take up to two years.&nbsp;
We take some skills in a course structure, like how to do intercultural dialogue, we organize intercultural dialogue events, and we open the pathway for the young people to implement the acquired skills.&nbsp;
How does the British Council address the needs of people with disabilities and&nbsp;Ensure that they are active participants in our initiatives?
When we talk about people with disabilities, we are not talking about part of the community in silos, we are talking about a cohesive community so we don't address them separately.
This is what we are going to do with people with disability, make sure that they are part of whatever we're doing and we are going to adjust whatever we're doing to meet their needs.

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