TED Fellows The TED Fellows Directory > Esra'a Al Shafei

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TEDGlobal 2009

Bahrain

Founder / Director, Mideast Youth; Founder, CrowdVoice.org

Websites

Bio

Esra'a Al Shafei is the founder and Executive Director of MideastYouth.com, a grassroots, indigenous digital network that leverages the power of new media to facilitate the struggle against oppression in the Middle East and North Africa. She is driven by her passion for civil engagement, freedom of speech, and employing innovative solutions to pervasive and persistent human problems. Her advocacy on the internet bridges seemingly impenetrable barriers of faith and geography to unite young people committed to fostering constructive discourse in the Middle East. She is also the director of a series of international campaigns for rights for ethnic, religious, and intellectual minorities. Among those she runs is the global campaign to free an imprisoned Egyptian blogger at FreeKareem.org. She is a recipient of the Berkman Award from Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and Society for "outstanding contributions to the internet and its impact on society," and is currently a TED Fellow and an Echoing Green Fellow. Most recently, her project won a ThinkSocial Award for serving as a "powerful model for how social media can be used to address global problems." She servers on the Advisory Board for the Meta-Activism Project and the European Summit for Global Transformation.

Q&A

What projects are you working on now that are most meaningful to you?

My primary project is MideastYouth.com. This platform was the wellspring for all of our other projects and inspired many important inter-ethnic and interfaith discussions about a wide variety of issues, controversial and otherwise. Many voices have been included regardless of faith, political opinions, or socioeconomic class.

Besides your work, what issues/ideas/pursuits are you passionate about?

My dream is to use any entrepreneurial skills I may have in order to create an accessible, sustainable digital product that literally impacts millions of lives in the Middle East. I think about this constantly and I'm very passionate about the use of digital media to improve lives, way beyond mere human rights and free speech, but also on an economical basis.

What do you do for fun?

Music is a great passion of mine. I love finding regional bands and seeing how we can assist them with emerging new technologies, such as Flip cameras or applications that allow live streaming of their gigs from mobile phones. I occasionally attend such gigs for fun, and MideastYouth.com loves sponsoring local bands with free stuff. I decided to put this passion of mine to good use and founded Mideast Tunes: Music for social change, which comes with an iPhone app allowing you to locate and listen to political musicians from the MENA region.

Recount a surprising anecdote about yourself that few people know.

My parents never knew about my work. I never felt the need to tell them, I didn't want to deal with either their discouragement or disappointment in me. However one day, we were sitting quietly at home eating dinner while watching Al Jazeera, like many Arab families do. Unexpectedly, they saw me on TV speaking about my campaign FreeKareem.org and couldn't believe their eyes -- the experience was shockingly funny for me, not so much for them though!