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October 2, 2025
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EBDA in March 2025

Media Team Report 

Overview
This month, the media team successfully completed multiple projects, including video editing, event coverage, and field missions to document key agricultural practices. Our focus was on enhancing engagement through social media content, capturing important events, and documenting innovative farming techniques. Below is a detailed summary of our accomplishments.

Video Production & Editing

The media team dedicated a significant portion of this month to producing high-quality videos that serve both educational and promotional purposes. These included:

  • Mandarin Learning Videos: We edited four videos aimed at facilitating Mandarin language learning. The editing process focused on improving clarity, adding engaging visuals, and ensuring smooth transitions to enhance the learning experience.
  • Social Media Reels: A total of seven new reels were created for social media, covering a variety of themes related to agriculture, sustainability, and community engagement. These short-form videos are crucial for increasing audience interaction and spreading awareness about EBDA’s activities.
  • EBDA Promotional Video: A long-format video introducing the Egyptian Biodynamic Association (EBDA) was produced, with a duration of approximately four minutes. This video is designed to be a key promotional tool on social media platforms, showcasing EBDA’s mission, impact, and core activities to a broader audience.

Event Coverage

This month, we also prioritized documenting important organizational events, ensuring their impact is shared with a wider audience.

  • Iftar at Sekem Farm: The team covered the Iftar event held at Sekem Farm, capturing the essence of the gathering, key moments of interaction, and speeches from participants. The coverage included both video and photography, providing valuable material for future promotional and archival purposes.

 

Field Missions

Our fieldwork efforts this month were instrumental in capturing new and innovative agricultural practices, providing visual documentation that will be used for both training and promotional content.

  • Fayoum Mission – Calendula Flower Cultivation:
    • The team traveled to Fayoum to document the cultivation process of calendula flowers, an important medicinal crop with numerous applications.
    • Filming focused on the different growth stages, harvesting techniques, and insights from farmers about the benefits and challenges of cultivating this crop.
  • Minya Mission – Intercropping Practices:
    • A second field mission took place in Minya, where the team filmed the practice of intercropping, an innovative agricultural method that involves growing two or more crops together to maximize land use and improve soil health.
    • The footage captured includes expert explanations on the benefits of intercropping, visual demonstrations of different crop combinations, and insights from local farmers adopting this technique.

Tackling Challenges & Learning efficiently 

Content Production Efficiency: 

Editing multiple videos while covering events and field missions required careful time management. The team improved its workflow by streamlining editing processes and prioritizing key content.

Technical Adjustments:

Some outdoor shoots presented challenges related to lighting and weather conditions. Future shoots will incorporate improved planning for optimal shooting conditions.

Engagement Metrics:

The social media reels are showing promising engagement rates. We will analyze performance data next month to refine our content strategy further.

Conclusion & Next Steps

This month, the media team made significant strides in content creation, event coverage, and field documentation. Moving forward, we aim to:

  • Expand the variety of social media content, including educational snippets and behind-the-scenes footage.
  • Improve coordination between field missions and editing schedules to enhance efficiency.
  • Develop additional long-format content to provide in-depth insights into EBDA’s initiatives.

Communications Team

  • Social Media Performance

EBDA:

  • Published Posts: 14 (Reels, Carousels, and Static Posts)

Milestones Achieved:

  • Reached 50K likes and followers on Facebook!
  • Heavily working on boosting posts and increasing engagement.
  • Received 800+ messages, with over 100 farmers expressing interest in registering their farms with EBDA—an impressive milestone!
  • YouTube Growth: We now have 1.31K subscribers on YouTube, showing steady progress in expanding our video content reach.

Economy of Love (EoL):

  • Published Posts: 13 (Reels, Carousels, and Static Posts)
  • Campaign Testing: Currently testing new campaigns and awaiting results.
  • Social Growth: The Facebook page now has 14K followers and likes, showing continued progress.
  • Key Highlights & Next Steps
  • The team has made significant progress in audience growth, engagement and in designs.
  • Our Facebook page milestones, engagement in messages, and increasing farmer registrations are clear indicators of success.
  • For EoL, we will monitor the campaign results and adjust strategies accordingly.
  • We aim to continue boosting content, optimizing engagement, and growing our audience across all platforms.

Participatory Guarantee System (PGS) Updates

Engineers monthly training

On March 9th, a training session on the Participatory Guarantee System (PGS) and the PGS checklist on Kobo was conducted for EBDA engineers to ensure they remain up-to-date with the system and auditing process. The session included 101 engineers from all governorates and was structured into two main sections. The first section focused on the peer reviewers’ incentive system, discussing ways to improve the process to ensure timely monthly transfers without delays. The second section covered the Kobo PGS checklist, where participants went through each point in detail to ensure a clear understanding of all checklist questions. 

Additionally, the session included planning for upcoming training initiatives. A Training of Trainers (ToT) session for new engineers is scheduled for April, equipping them with the necessary skills to train peer reviewers. Furthermore, plans were made for peer reviewer training sessions, which will be conducted by EBDA engineers across all governorates.

EBDA Events and Activities

Empowering Women in Rural Egypt Project Kick-off Event

The Empowerment of Women in Rural Egypt took center stage during a two-day event held on March 12-13, 2025. This event marked the launch of an initiative aimed at creating opportunities and enhancing the socioeconomic standing of women in rural communities. Stakeholders from various organizations collaborated to address challenges and chart a path forward for women’s empowerment.

The Egyptian Biodynamic Association (EBDA) is proud to be part of the “Empowerment of Women in Rural Egypt Project“. This project aims to enhance the socio-economic standing of women in rural communities through collaborative efforts and innovative programs. As part of the project we are responsible for: 

  • Recruiting three moderators to lead focus groups for women.
  • Collaborating with The Integral Development Action of Minia (IDAM),It’s a Catholic Coptic Archbishopric in Minia responsible for  marginalized individuals to achieve human dignity through empowering communities, to share expertise on saving and loan boxes for financial empowerment.
  • Establishing around 13 groups with 10-20 women each to foster leadership and community development.

 

One of the key discussions revolved around the different approaches taken by rural women compared to men in managing savings. It was observed that women tend to be more keen and calculative, carefully planning their contributions and expenses. This meticulous approach not only enhances their financial stability but also strengthens their role in decision-making within their households and communities.

The workshop also introduced the various instruments used in the system to ensure transparency and efficiency. Among these were:

  • A safe box, used to securely store the collected savings.
  • Booklets, where each member’s savings and loans were recorded to maintain accountability.
  • A symbolic arrow, which represented the quantity saved by each individual on a weekly basis, serving as a visual aid for tracking contributions.

The workshop provided valuable insights into how such a system fosters financial independence, particularly for rural women, and strengthens communal financial cooperation. The knowledge shared by IDAM was both practical and inspiring, emphasizing the power of organized savings in achieving economic stability and empowerment. 

 

EBDA Information Technology Department

Nearly the team have finished collecting data and now we’re working on the validation , testing phase  simultaneously, for the new carbon registry platform

EBDA achievements 

Registration of Three New Orange Farms in the FDA

Registration of orange farms in the FDA

Registration of an 18-Acre Farm

A new 18-acre farm has been registered with the EBDA.

Eng. Attia followed up with the facebook messages by calling them and reaching out with the farmers.

Fairtrade Corrective Actions

Collecting the required documents for the fair-trade audit that was held last January to submit it in the Flocert.

Fair-trade technical support meeting to resolve the corrective actions for the Flocert 

The EBDA Farmer Multipliers

The EBDA Team had a mission to Beheira Governorate to visit a multiplayer while he was doing his work of registering farms. The multiplayer system is a system designed by EBDA and started in January 2025.

 

 

DoPay & NBE

  • Do-pay  Updates

To promote financial inclusion and empower farmers, the Egyptian Agriculture Biodynamic Association (EBDA) has teamed up with Dopay to offer visa cards to farmers. By providing farmers with easy access to financial services and encouraging economic development in rural areas, this program seeks to raise farmers’ standard of living.

  • Batch Completion: The first batch of payments, involving 1,114 farm owners, has successfully been sent to the bank, initiating the process of creating Visa cards for them.
  • -Team Integration: Our team has been successfully boarded onto the DO-pay system, ensuring smooth operations.
  • -Meeting Highlights: On 19/3/2025, a meeting was held with the DO-pay team and Mr. Hany Bahy (SEKEM-EBDA CFO) to discuss plans for the upcoming quarters. During the meeting, they announced the upcoming launch of the Meeza card, which will feature InstaPay capabilities for seamless transactions.

Cards’ Services of NBE/DoPay

  • Receive and withdraw money in Egyptian pounds 24/7 without visiting a bank.
  • Enjoy contactless transactions.
  • Withdraw cash easily from National Bank of Egypt ATMs or other bank ATMs in Egypt.

DoPay

  •  Farmers can withdraw their funds without any deductions
  • They have the benefit of up to five transactions per month with no deductions.
  •  Farmers can purchase their needs from BOS methodologies
  •  The service allows withdrawals via Wi-Fi. 

NBE

The team has sent a new batch of 99 Meeza cards to be activated 

  • There are 82 active cases ,The issues from the total shipment is 17.
  • The issues will be addressed through coordination with the engineers to complete the necessary data required for resolution.

EBDA Farmers’ Growth March, 2025

EBDA extension engineers successfully registered 560 new farms in March that included 2094 farmers with a total area of 9,600 acres.

EBDA total registered information  in the until March, 2025 as follows:

  • Total farms: 4976 farms registered
  • Total farmers: 22,269 farmers registered
  • Total area in acres: 95,860 Feddan