The British University’s dedicated community service efforts have been recognized with our “Convoys of Compassion” entry being shortlisted for the Times Higher Education Arab Awards in the Outstanding Contribution to Regional Development category.
The British University in Egypt’s Strategy reflects the values of our founder, industrialist Mr Mohamed Farid Khamis, who believed in education’s transformative role for citizenship and society. We align with Egypt’s Vision 2030 and the governmental ‘Haya Karima’ (decent life) initiative. Our institutional aim is to prepare our students for active participation within their communities through responsible and responsive service. We are convinced that the discipline-specific and broader interpersonal and intuitive skills they develop equip our students effectively for an unknowable future where decency, kindness, and action are vital.
Community engagement is a key strategic pillar, taking different forms across our portfolio. Our Faculties of Dentistry and Nursing are unique in the scale and impact of this mission. They send students, supervised by professors and teaching assistants, in medical convoys across all governorates in Egypt, providing free dental and medical diagnosis and treatment, vaccination and clinical pharmacy services, oral, physical/mental health, and nutrition awareness campaigns, advice on prevention, treatment, and effective management of asthma, diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol, osteoporosis, osteoarthritis, and parasite infection, breast examination and midwifery services.
Students from both faculties undertake placements in hospitals, clinics, and hospices, and the Faculty of Dentistry treats up to nine hundred residents per day, on campus, free of charge. Nevertheless, the power of taking the skills, knowledge, and expertise of staff and students to urban slums and remote villages, where basic health cover and preventative treatment are underfunded, underequipped, and of low quality, cannot be underestimated.
A third of Egyptians live in extreme poverty, so our dental and nursing students make a significant impact on those communities. Moreover, while Cairo is one of the most densely populated cities in the world, with extreme deprivation in particular quarters, the gap in availability of medical services between Cairo and outlying regions needs to be experienced by our students to be fully understood.
Students learn to apply their knowledge in real-world circumstances, where need is great, gaining emotional maturity in dealing with humbling contexts and conditions. Most come from relatively privileged backgrounds, and exposure to poverty in the context of being able to make some impact is transformational. They benefit personally by facing their fears and prejudices, and develop rapidly through professional skills enhancement, ‘in the field’, including teamwork, communication, and advocacy in healthcare.
From February 2024 to February 2025, twenty-six dental convoys with mobile X-ray and extraction facilities have travelled to all areas of Egypt, treating 14,439 adults and offering dental health awareness advice to 4,895 children. In the same period, the Faculty of Nursing provided healthcare for around 300 individuals.
Our Chancellor, renowned Egyptian-British cardiovascular surgeon Sir Magdi Yacoub, inspires our students. His philosophy, “satisfaction comes from helping others…make your actions louder than your words”, reflects our adherence to the spirit of Haya Karima and the idea of ‘learning by doing’. Through experiential learning, our students become passionate and compassionate practitioners. With our Faculty of Physiotherapy opening in 2025, our convoy impact will continue to grow and diversify in Egypt’s needy places.
