News and Events

Past and Present

Firstly, a review of the last five years.

Our work in Sinai has continued its rhythm since 2021, with three to four Project Journeys each year. Helen continued this work until 2025 when she handed over to Katharine.  Helen handed over just as the total of well restorations reached 700, a great achievement for the Trust, with an estimated 35,000 people having local access to water.

The post-pandemic years saw the cessation of two of our projects, the Carpentry School and the Orphan Herb Project, due to Egyptian restrictions on informal education of minors. We hope that there will be other ways of ensuring education projects can continue in future.  However the Seedbank continues in its adhoc way, providing quality seeds to Bedouin to grow vegetables. 

The Trust has set up a new project. aimed at supporting the Mouzaina tribe who still have a largely nomadic traditional existence, living in tents or basic brick houses and moving a several times a year.  They are a large tribe of around 12,000 people living in central South Sinai, mostly in the desert areas and the foothills of the mountains.  They have little income except from the sale of their goats and camels, and this is not enough to support a family.   Providing food to feed a family is difficult and alternative sources of income are hard to find in the desert.

In the past the women would collect goat and camel hair, spin it and weave it into their traditional tents while they moved over large areas of land following the grazing produced by sporadic rain.  Their tents are often made of cotton now, so instead they want to weave wool into rugs and bags to sell. This project would bring in a small, but significant income to goat and to camel owners who will collect the wool as well as to the women who can spin and weave handicrafts.  They also want to make clothes for their families to save money, for which they need sewing machines and a dust free room to house them.  Many Bedouin women have spare time and would like to increase the income to their family, especially at a time when there is little work for the men. Sheikh Mousa, head of the tribe, has been promised a shop for selling the handicrafts on a prominent tourist route, by the Governor of South Sinai, Major General Dr Khaled Mubarak Hussein Bakri.

We funded the initial setting up of the project in one location, buy buying the goat and camel fur up front, then spinning and weaving it at one village by some of the village women.  Others have been busy making handicrafts to sell.  One year on and hundreds of women are weaving and making handicrafts.  The template for getting the project up and running has been rolled out to other communities and the income is gathering momentum.  There is still work to be done such as funding buildings required as sewing rooms, and funding transport to connect the herders to the spinners and weavers, and then from them to the shops and hotels.

The project will have several benefits: 

  • it will preserve the traditional weaving skills of the Desert Bedouin
  • the textile workshop with sewing machines will enable the Bedouin women to make clothes for their families at a much lower costs than buying them
  • it will enable Bedouin women to bring in an income to their families while working at home 
  • women looking after sheep and goats will earn extra income from sale of the wool
  • goats and camels will be shorn of their excess hair and fur before the summer heat starts to affect them adversely.

 More about the Projects

 You can read about all the projects and our journeys in the Journey Report and  Newsletters posted under the News page. News changes fast and these pages will be updated regularly with local events that the Makhad Trust are involved with.

If you would like to help by joining a journey, please see the contact details on the Journey page.

You can also listen to some of our videos on YouTube at www.youtube.com/makhadtrust