In March 2020, Noura Selim, the executive director of the Sawiris Foundation for Social Development (SFSD), faced an unprecedented challenge as the COVID-19 pandemic began to severely impact the Egyptian economy and its people. Prior to the outbreak, the foundation’s core strategic focus was geared toward long-term development—specifically improving the lives of impoverished communities through structured education, social, and economic empowerment programmes. The rapidly escalating pandemic demanded an immediate pivot, forcing Selim to consider how the foundation could rapidly assess and deploy support to cushion Egypt’s most marginalized and vulnerable populations from sudden health and economic shocks.

The foundation’s capacity for major intervention stems from the generational success of the Sawiris family, one of the wealthiest families in Egypt. The family legacy began in 1950 when entrepreneur Onsi Sawiris founded Orascom Construction Ltd, a major player in building Egypt’s national infrastructure, including water treatment plants, railways, and skyscrapers. His three entrepreneurial sons—Naguib, Samih, and Nassef—subsequently took over, expanding and diversifying the family conglomerate into diverse global industries such as telecommunications, property development, and fertilizers, while simultaneously establishing a powerful reputation for community philanthropy.

The deep-seated culture of giving within the foundation was heavily influenced by Onsi Sawiris’s wife, Yousriya Loza Sawiris, a financial auditor and development practitioner. She actively instilled the value of philanthropic duty and tithing in her sons from a young age by bringing them along to work in less privileged garbage collector communities. These formative, first-hand exposures to economic hardship deeply entrenched a lifelong commitment within the family to give back to their community in a structured, highly impactful, and sustainable manner, providing the philosophical backbone for SFSD’s modern crisis response.