What do you get when you combine 19 of the nation’s most followed ‘tweeps,’ a neglected village with over 650,000 people in dire need of development and the largest companies in Egypt? The answer is Tweetback.
The brainchild of Mahmoud Salem, known by his alias Sandmonkey and as one of Egypt’s biggest bloggers and activists, Tweetback is a one-of-a-kind fundraising initiative that uses the power of social media to spread its humanitarian message.
“I don’t understand my fame,” says Salem. “I’m not objecting to it, but apparently I can do things so I thought of a way to use the hype to actually raise funds and help.”
Salem says he came up with the idea during a tour of Ezbet Khairallah, a 12 square kilometer slum in southern Cairo, with members of the NGO Kheir weh Baraka. While there, Salem decided he needed to raise awareness about the area’s plight as well as collect funds to improve infrastructure and community programs with the aim of providing better opportunities for its residents.
The idea was to encourage companies, foundations and individuals to pledge donations to Ezbet Khairallah and other development projects in the future. In exchange, the initiative’s network of influential Twitter micro-bloggers would then tweet about the companies’ contributions to their thousands of followers in Arabic and English. “The idea came and it was genius because it involved doing nothing,” he says.
Salem approached Rania Helmy, the founder and chief publicist of Publicist Inc, a public relations consultancy, who helped him develop the concept further.
“Initially, we had to put a proposal together that clearly outlined the whole concept behind Tweetback, and we divided it into donor packages and divided the benefits according to the sum of the donation,” says Helmy.
Soon after, Salem began rounding up tweeps he knew would be interested in helping out and represented the numerous social groups found on Twitter. He chose Heba El-Kayal, who has 3,000 followers from the higher ends of society, as well as Nawara Negm, who tweets mostly in Arabic and is followed by people from middle-income families. He also talked to Ayman Mohyeldin, a media personality from Al Jazeera, Moez Masoud, an Islamic preacher and Bassem Youssef, who recently became famous for his Bassem Youssef Show. Together, the 19-person tweep team had a combined 250,000 followers.
But even with everything in place, Tweeback’s success was under threat when protesters staged at sit in Tahrir Square on July 8, grabbing headlines and making it difficult to organize support for such an event.
“The sit-in happened, it ruined everything but we still managed,” says Salem, who had joined the sit-in by setting up his own tent in the middle of Tahrir to show his support for protesters’ demands for a democratic Egypt. To keep the event’s momentum going, Salem brought his laptop, a USB internet connection, a power cord that connected to a lamppost, a fan and other essential items, such as blocks of ice, chocolate and cigarettes.
Despite the bump in the road, Tweetback managed to organize its first event on July 26, where Nevine Elibrashy, the head of Kheir weh Baraka, announced the organization had raised over LE 1.3 million — approximately 70% of the goal thanks to major donors like Mobinil, Coca-Cola and Azza Fahmy.
CSR at its best
According to Salem, the problem with a lot of corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives in Egypt is that they are propaganda and do not fulfill their promises to the community.
“There are some companies who are embarking on CSR projects that sound very flashy, but they add no benefit,” insists Salem.
What makes Tweetback different is that it focuses on a specific area and practical solutions to its immediate problems, including a new school, repaving the village’s road that has been responsible for several accidents and deaths of Ezbet Khairallah residents and workshops for people to learn skills to start their own businesses.
The tangible benefits of the project are why big players like Coca-Cola came on board. Ghada Makady, senior manager of public affairs and communications at Coca-Cola Egypt, says Tweetback was right on track with the company’s CSR policy.
In 2010, the company began an initiative to help 100 small villages practice sustainable development and after hearing about Tweetback, it added Ezbet Khairallah to the list.
“We’ve been doing a lot of CSR work in community development at Coca-Cola and we are continuing in our direction,” says Makady, adding that the company does not simply invest the money but rather ensures sustainability. “We developed a couple of schools in the governorate of Assuit four or five years ago, and until today we are still keeping an eye on their progress,” she says.
State responsibility vs CSR
There’s a popular forward circulating on Facebook, Twitter and BlackBerry Messenger that reads: “If Vodafone is developing schools, Chipsy is ensuring children stay in school, Resala is dressing the poor, Mobinil is providing jobs for 200,000 Egyptians, Pepsi is sponsoring sports and Etisalat is providing water to homes, then what is the government doing?”
In that same vein, Tweetback received its own criticism for doing what some people deemed “charity work” that the government should be responsible for instead of focusing on democracy promotion initiatives more in line with revolution protesters’ goals.
“The criticism that comes in is that you are replacing the state,” says Salem. “But right now, you need the whole society to work on rebuilding […] in an active democracy, all citizens are active participants. Sustainability is nice, but not if we’re going to ignore people’s needs right now, because there’s always a short-term solution and a long-term solution,” adds Salem.
Helmy agrees. “There’s a dire need to fill the gap, even though we do understand that in the long term nothing is sustainable without the government,” she says.
And for now, Salem is not shying away from depending on big, multinational corporations to fill that gap despite his reputation as anti-establishment.
“I have ends that I want to achieve […] what’s the problem if some corporation gets good PR out of it? At the end of the day, corporations are owned by citizens and whoever makes the decision is a citizen,” says Salem. “Lots of people working in CSR are just Egyptians who found themselves controlling budgets of multi-national companies.
“Anybody who has taken sides on the issue without understanding it is an idiot. We don’t need text book solutions, we don’t need utopian people but what we want are people on the ground facing the problem for what it is,” he adds.
Political and economic theories aside, the money collected through Tweetback can only mean one thing for the people of Ezbet Khairallah — a better opportunity at a cleaner, safer neighborhood and perhaps a chance at a brighter future
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