There are many ways that GE works to support the growing Egyptian economy and the ongoing improvement to the quality of life for people across the country. The holy month of Ramadan offers a special opportunity to continue this work.

As GE Volunteers in Egypt have done for nearly three years, they partnered with the Nebny Foundation – this time to purchase and prepare Ramadan food packages for underprivileged families in Cairo.

During the first week of Ramadan, a group of more than 20 GE Volunteers from the Cairo office went to the Foundation's location in Manshiet Nasr, one of the city's most underprivileged areas. The employees from across the company's businesses worked alongside children from the neighborhood, as well as volunteering university students.

First, the GE Volunteers individually packaged each of the foods items – preparing hundreds of individual parcels of rice, beans, pasta, sugar, tea and dates. Then they prepared 250 Ramadan packages containing all of the different food items.

While the employees volunteered their time, GE Egypt made a $2,000 donation that the Nebny Foundation used to help purchase the food used in the Ramadan packages. This was approximately twice the amount that GE contributed last Ramadan for the same activity.

Egypt Powers Up as Hot Summer Months of Ramadan Approach

Egypt has struggled with a serious energy crisis in recent years, with parts of the country, in 2014, experiencing as many as six power cuts a day for up to two hours at a time as the demand for electricity hit a record high of 27,700 megawatts daily - 20% more than the country's power stations could provide. According to GE, there is "good news for millions of Egyptians and countless industrial firms and companies" as GE and its partners "race against the sun and rising temperatures to add more gigawatts (GW) of new power to the grid. More about GE in Africa in this BRIEFING.

In all, the GE Volunteers donated more than 55 hours to their work with the Foundation. Not only did they reflect the Ramadan spirit of charity and provide food for Egyptians to prepare their Ramadan iftars, but they also felt a sense of personal reward by giving back to their community.

GE has been a partner to Nebny Foundation on projects including food donation and distribution, clothes donations, and helping the NGO build a computer lab for children in the district.

Nebny Foundation is a non-profit organization focused on improving the living conditions and quality of life of Egyptian youth. They focus on three pillars: education, employment and healthcare.

This multifaceted approach to community development is central to GE as a company that not only does CSR and sustainability, but builds it into the very ethos and purpose of the company.

This article first appeared on GE Hewar Blog