Nawaya has been busy busy in the past few months, from setting up its farmer's apprenticeship program to setting up the new Slow Food Cairo Convivium, to documenting uses of dates in its documentation project. So what does all this entail. Well Nawaya is a social enterprise that seeks to create sustainable farming systems and enable Egypt to co-create self reliant, bountiful and resilient communities. Our farmers apprenticeship program has just started, which has meant town hall meetings in abusir to inform people about the project, assessments of the different potential candidates, interviews, final assessments of the land that we will begin our experimentation on. We now have 11 apprentices that we are super excited to work with for the coming two years. We have already completed one training cycle that has included 4 days for the identification of their training needs for the coming 2 years. To ensure that within two years we will have cleaner and more sustainable farming methods, and they will have access to new markets for new "reefy"/rural products. So wait for the upcoming products that we will be launching that are cleaner, small scale farmer produced. Very soon there will be balady cheeses, balady chickens and ducks.... Keep a look out!At the same time volunteers have been hailing to our experimentation plot on Fagnoon, to convert our 16 erat of land to a permaculture demonstration centre. So if you are free on sunday, tuesday, thursday or friday and want to get your hands dirty well contact aurelia on our Fb page.As part of ensuring a strong network of good, clean and fair food, Nawaya has helped establish Slow Food Cairo Convivium (chapter) with diverse activities from events such as the Date Palm Festival that took place in Fagnoon in October. This was a celebration of date palm products and the people who produce them. Our next event will be on December 14th this time valorizing a product unknown to many Egyptians which is the wahi rice, a variety of rice grown only in the western desert. Slow food is a movement of foodies, farmers, chefs and all sorts of people who are interested to give value to indigenous Egyptian foods and agricultural products. We are accepting memberships at the moment.Finally, as part of our collaboration with an organization called Access Agriculture, Betty and Laura have been busily documenting the processing of Agwa from dates, following the dates from harvest all the way to manufacturing. Lots more will be happening in the coming months, from workshops, to slow food events, to new healthy produce so keep a look out on our fb page. nawayaegypt.