Design a Montagreed

The challenge aims to design new and out of the box products with only one unit of lumber (60 cm*10 cm*10 mm) while still maintaining the traditional Egyptian style. Find details below:

The project was started by the Egyptian Society for Endogenous Development of Local Communities (EGYCOM), founded by Dr. Hamed Ibrahim El Mousely, in August 2010. The initial thought was to develop a new project that can help one of the poorest villages in Egypt. Based on the UN Human Development report for Egypt, EGYCOM found that 44% of the 762 of the poorest villages are in Menya in Upper Egypt. EGYCOM conducted further research on the poorest villages in Menya governorate to find the poorest one there, the final result pointed to the village of Al Qayat.

EGYCOM started working with the local community of Al Qayat to analyze the social, economic, and resource conditions in the village. In the end, palm trees were recognized as an abundant unutilized resource in the village. Many households owned palm trees, and they are an important economic resource for the villagers. This created the project idea; the idea of the project is to use secondary products of palm trees, namely, palm midribs, to produce block boards and other marketable furniture items.

The project creates a model for dealing with agricultural residues in an innovative way; it uses machines that are especially designed for production in villages, in regular households requiring no additional utilities or special investments. This innovation takes advantage of available resources and satisfies local and international needs of wood using wood substitutes, made from agricultural residues, while creating income sources for the poor households of the village, enabling women and men to be productive in their homes, and reducing the negative impact on the environment from burning the palm midribs, or poor maintenance of the palm trees.

Designing new and out of the box products using only one unit of lumber (60 cm*10 cm*10 mm) while still maintaining the Egyptian heritage such as the Pharaohs, Greek, Roman, Coptic, Islamic and Modern.

The project aims to capitalize on the success of the pilot phase that took place in one of the poorest villages of the Minya Governorate, Al Qayat. It succeeded in manufacturing high quality products made from palm midribs. The pilot phase provided a model of small enterprises that are based on manufacturing secondary products of 42,000 palm trees which are readily available in Al Qayat and the near-by villages.

First five places will receive a 1000 EGP financial award. Additionally, other winners can be selected, they will also be rewarded with 10% profit share for a whole year.

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