INTERVIEWER: MAHMOUD MANSI
HR Revolution Middle-East Magazine: You have been involved in Civil Work for years, and you have climbed the ladder until you became the President of Alexandria EuroMed Summit. From your opinion what were the reasons behind this progressive success?
Amr El Gammal: My very first start was in Step up youth initiative as a participant in Alexandria Model of European union for the year 2011. Since day one, I loved the project and the idea of volunteering for raising the general awareness of the Egyptian youth, especially after the great revolution of January 25th. I focused and made many efforts in MEU till I earned the title of “Best Delegate”. After that, I joined the informal education program in Step Up and was trained by the best volunteers who originally started their volunteering careers in 2005. I gained great experiences and worked in over than 13 projects, thanks to Allah, the professionals who trained me, and my will and volition to achieve success in this career and compensate the many problems I faced in my studies. I was accepted after I applied as a president of Alexandria EUROMED Summit 2014 in its third year, after 4 years of hard work and good gradient of positions, grace to Allah and everyone I have worked with.
HR Revolution Middle-East Magazine: As a trainer in the origin, leader and a president, you are popular for being influential and motivating the heads, members and delegates. How do you manage to mentally and emotionally make them so passionate?
Amr El Gammal: The first thing I believed in is that “You will never satisfy everyone” and no matter how hard you’ve worked in motivating your staff and participants, many of them would positively respond and start working on themselves, but also there will be many who would reject it.
From this point, I believe that “the principle of reward” comes after motivation. We spoke to our staff and participants about the value of our volunteering work and how great it is to contribute by any percentage in building this society. We see this through the appreciation we get from our participants and even their parents, and the amazing words stating how much we have positively affected their lives and worked in building their personalities.
“Super Star of the Week” title is for any staff member who makes extra efforts in our project and is more special than his fellow team members. “Best Committee Member” title and “Best Staff Member” title are for honoring people who have been loyal and hard working through the project’s phases.
We also pass motivational notes to our staff members thanking them for their great performance during the day (Specially the academic facilitators).
HR Revolution Middle-East Magazine: How are the delegates of Alexandria EuroMed Summit different than delegates from other simulation models?
Amr El Gammal: The special thing about Alex EMS graduated participants since the project’s start is their high spirit and their passion to continue in the volunteering career in different types of projects.
Alex EMS is serving the civil community in Alexandria by graduating a new generation of new staff members and committee heads every year, and that’s something we are proud of and working hard to keep it going on track.
HR Revolution Middle-East Magazine: What does your HR Committee focus on the most when it comes to recruiting new members?
Amr El Gammal: The role of the HR committee is very important and complicated in every year’s version of the project as they are responsible for creating the general recruitment criteria of the staff and participants, as well as the evaluation process of the participants’ progress using new and creative working methodologies.
As the project’s vision and criteria change every year, the working base of each committee also changes with new added features and working methods. However, the basics remain as they are, as our main vision in recruiting new members depends on their commitment, level of English language, accepting different cultures and points of view, good manners and honesty, in order to help each other in achieving the informal education process perfectly.
HR Revolution Middle-East Magazine: What are your negative and positive comments regarding civil work in Alexandria?
Amr El Gammal: Well, I always that the civil work is something too vast to criticize as a whole as it includes many types of voluntary work whether in charities, arts and culture, education, sport, human rights or other categories. However, we also have to state the fact that many changes have taken place in the last few years regarding the criteria of accepting people who join and the experience of the people in the management.
Back when I applied, it wasn’t as easy as nowadays to recruit people to be in charge as it really mattered what the general vision and the working bases were. The less experience you have in building a general vision, the more problems you will cause and face during the management period of any project. And that’s why we always advise that we should make extreme criteria for recruiting people who would be able to lead any sort of working groups. That is in order to reduce the percentage of caused problems in the management process or avoid repeating the same ideas we’re working on, which is unfortunately happening nowadays in many entities.
But of course, the civil work will continue great value to many people’s lives. Learning new elements that can build your personality and teaching them to others is totally priceless. I hope the upcoming generations would put that in their minds as a priority when they start their volunteering career.
HR Revolution Middle-East Magazine: What does applying a simulation model add to the personality of the delegate?
Amr El Gammal: We always work on two sides…
The academic knowledge: By giving the participants the needed basics of many active academic topics such as the definitions of words they frequently hear like: “democracy”. Topics vary and are categorized to be within the scope of international politics, international economy, the world’s cultures and the environment.
The other side is the soft skills: We work on building the needed basis that would qualify our participant to be a good presenter, have good communication skills, negotiation skills, time management and many more.
HR Revolution Middle-East Magazine: What is the best teaching technique that makes a difference with the delegates?
Amr El Gammal: The workshops are considered the best technique to make true changes to the delegate’s mentality every session. Dividing the delegates into groups and making them work together helps perfectly in building the capacity of each delegate and it also helps in reaching the academic topics faster.
HR Revolution Middle-East Magazine: From your experience in working in several EuroMed Summits, and from your personal perspective, what are the major political problems within the EuroMed area that handicaps the flow of business projects within the region? And what sort of solutions you suggest?
Amr El Gammal: The EuroMed area faces many basic problems that prevent the cooperation process between its countries; segmentation in Syria, illegal immigration problems in Italy and UK, the economical problem in Greece and terrorist attacks in Egypt. Many problems that must either be fought to reach the needed development and progress in this big area, or they defeats us causing bigger catastrophes.
How could we find solutions for these problems? That’s the kind of questions we’re waiting for our participants of Alexandria EuroMed Summit to discuss and find a solution for in the conference phase. And we believe that our participants are capable of doing what’s more.
HR Revolution Middle-East Magazine: You established a partnership with AIESEC Alexandria and they annually send you interns to work with you, how do the interns add to the project?
Amr El Gammal: Every year we have a new vision for the project.
In 2012, our aim – through the vision of Mr. Ahmed Abul Elaa – was to help in expanding the circle of the simulation models to take place inside the Universities.
In 2013, Mr. Mahmoud Mansi had a new vision that we include the Arts and the talents to be an official element in the project.
In 2014, my dream was to have a project that combines between the simulation models and the culture exchanging problem, I made many contacts with Project Managers responsible for simulation models taking place in European countries. I dreamt of having an “International Call for Participants” who would work with their fellow Egyptian participants in creating new different perspective as we aimed in our initiative Purple Development in 2014.
The partnership with the AIESEC was one of the most successful partnerships to take place in Alexandria EUROMED Summit 2014; Purple Development admitted that as much as AIESEC Alexandria did. Of course we both have faced many problems as it is not easy to have this collaboration, but the experience was very successful.
Beside the main advantage of working on our participants’ Academic knowledge and soft skills, We worked on the cultural exchange element, giving our Egyptian and Non-Egyptian participants the chance to experience their culture by making filed trips, events like round-table conversations, tours to the Egyptian landmarks and sharing the recipes of the traditional food of their cultures through a mega outing that included many fun and cultural activities.
The feedback we received was beyond our expectations from both the Egyptian and Foreigner participants. It was a great experience and we hope that the upcoming version of EuroMed would develop and present more to the upcoming generations.
HR Revolution Middle-East Magazine: When it comes to choosing a Project Coordinator for Alexandria EuroMed Summit, what are the qualities you look for? And how do you test them in an interview?
Amr El Gammal: As you know, Alexandria EUROMED Summit since 2014 has become a part of and the flagship project of Purple Development youth initiative, so the call for the project manager/coordinator should match the main vision that Purple Development sets every year separately as the board of the initiative changes every year.
But mainly, testing the project manager is through evaluating his full plan and vision through the project and inquiries about every little detail within a presentation presented by the applicant for the project coordinator post. One of the most important points is mentioning the working methodology he’s going to use as an application for his vision and the cooperation with the board members.
HR Revolution Middle-East Magazine: Mr. Amr, we sincerely thank you so much for sharing your passion with us, and for providing such honorable and valuable interview.
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