Mobilising the community to create a cultural shift and empower women through awareness, education, self-defense and support resources for survivors
Basant
Basant is working on a PhD in Public Health at the University of Maryland. She earned her MD from Ain Shams University and a Masters in Public Health from Johns Hopkins.
“Since the Egyptian revolution, the country has become deeply polarised. The conflicts in society have expanded on so many levels, and the transformation of these conflicts is impossible without gendered lenses that take into account gender-based violence victims.”
Basant took part in the 2018 Gather Fellowship, SE Forum’s partnership with Seeds of Peace.
Aspire
In 2011, Basant founded Aspire, the only organisation that operates in Cairo’s fragile, marginalised communities to empower young women and provide specialised support resources to violence survivors and victims of abuse. Within three years, the organisation grew into a network of over 600 volunteers across Egypt. Aspire targets marginalised women as well as their children in the five most vulnerable slums in Cairo. It establishes support networks for violence survivors, women’s rights activists and volunteers though community-based victim centers, legal clinics, reproductive health and rights classes, self-defense trainings, counselling sessions and self-esteem workshops. To date, Aspire has touched the lives of 500 abuse survivors and protected more than 300 women from falling victims to violence.
