AUC Digitizes Community Service

By: Dalia Abdelwahab

@Lia_A0617

Photo: Doha Wang

Some of the university’s student-run entities plan on adopting a hybrid online/in-person model of operation this semester.

This comes after a statement made by Vice-President for Student Life Deena Boraie during the “Back to Fall” Campus Conversation, saying that hosting events on campus this Fall semester will be prohibited.

This decision is part of the university’s precautionary measures against COVID-19.

One of the clubs adapting to a hybrid approach is 3alraseef (On The Sidewalk), which helps underprivileged and homeless children with their studies and by providing general support.

“While being online, we will still be giving underprivileged and homeless children online tutoring sessions and working with them normally off-campus,” Ziad Sorour, president of 3alraseef, told The Caravan.

Under normal circumstances, 3alraseef usually raises awareness and gathers donations to support its cause through events.

Sorour added that all on-campus work is frozen, so they can’t host any events or try to raise awareness about anything except online.

Collecting donations is much harder while being online, he added.

Another student club, Revival, aims to adopt a hybrid model for its upcoming events and workshops as well. Revival’s main mission is to serve the community around AUC by aiding the homeless.

“Despite how difficult our current circumstances are, I believe that [the circumstances] will produce stronger members and individuals who were able to work with what they had during these unprecedented times,” Revival President Ahmed Salah said.

Revival plans on hosting online workshops for its volunteers to teach them how to help homeless people around Cairo.

The workshops will be dedicated to training volunteers on how to teach illiterate people, and how to approach homeless people in order to accompany them to shelters. The volunteers will then go out and put the workshops into practice.

“It’s difficult for our volunteers who teach illiterate people and those who take homeless people to shelters to digitize their operations since they deal with homeless people on a direct basis,” Salah told The Caravan.

He maintains that some precautionary measures will be taken to protect the volunteers and the homeless individuals they serve – the main purpose behind the foundation of the club.

Developers, another student-run organization, will also be hosting online workshops throughout the semester.

“One of the most important things we do is that we train cadres within the university from other student-run entities and clubs. In normal semesters, we would book classrooms to host workshops in, along with other face-to-face activities,” Abdelrahman Rezk, president of Developers, said.

He finds that switching to online instruction has created challenges with how workshops are run as they are designed to be hands-on and interaction-centric.

“Another problem would be the instability of the internet connection of some of the attendees, hindering them from making full use of the workshops,” Rezk told The Caravan.

As a solution, Rezk confirmed that all of the workshops and training sessions which will be held by Developers throughout the Fall semester will be recorded for later use and review.