Expanding Boundaries

In Upper Egypt, Saleh Abdel Aziz, a junior student at Beni Suef University spoke to UCCD staff members in a short video about his experience with Titan group in the cement industry which his center brought as a two days experience of job shadowing for him and 31 other students.

“The time we spent on Zoom with Titan company was very beneficial to me and all my colleagues, the company was extremely professional, on time, and they even got feedback from all of us to work on any deficiencies they have in the workflow,” says Abdel Aziz.

In a few moments during the two-minute video passionately showcased all that he learned as the steps of manufacturing cement during his experience with the prestigious Titan company.

 “I don’t think that in real life I would have had this opportunity to see all these steps, especially the part where we see the explosion of the mountains which is the very first part of the process,” said Abdel Aziz.

Project Manager of UCCD Beni Suef Mina Youssef explained that the cooperation with Titan company was following the round table discussion in many employers and companies attended at the university in January.

“We invited the company to our round table and since then they decided to make the center as an outsourcing place for employment,” says Youssef.

The center started on June 14 with a new batch of 45 students attending a new round of job shadowing with Titan.

“We were so proud of hosting such an event and we believe it was very beneficial for our students to be witnessing everything live and with videos,” said Youssef.

He added that the company promised that they will be reciprocally shadowing students as well and will be offering internships and offers for those who deserve it with technical and soft skills courses implemented by Titan company.

What made UCCD bring Titan group is that it is one of Egypt’s market leaders in the cement industry. Another reason is that they operate in only two factories in Egypt one in Beni Suef where the job shadowing took place the other was in Alexandria.

Game Changer, Win-Win Situation

Amid all the efforts exerted by UCCDs all over governorates, sometimes students still are not engaged due to the general mood of the stay at home, quarantining, the high numbers of infections and all the negative atmosphere that we are all living in nowadays. This all was being considered and noticed by the mindful teams all over UCCDs but especially in UCCD Mansoura.

They designed a competition where students will share videos presenting how the center's services affected them, the center shall then post the videos on their Facebook page, and each video will stay on the page for 24 hours the three videos that get the highest shares, comments and likes will be awarded 500, 300 and 200 EGP, respectively.

They have also thought of creating what they called "Career Zoom” which is a series of 15 information sessions the center launched on Sunday, April 26. The series aimed at shedding the light on several careers and how they are coping during the current crisis and what new skills they will be looking for in candidates.

In a first, the UCCD Mansoura team has also initiated the idea of a two-day forum attended by 1250 students with the cooperation of 14 different key speakers participated in the event from different sectors; banking, FMCG, pharmaceuticals, real estate, technology, logistics, engineering and marketing.

“Students requested the center to organize certain sessions again as they were very interested in the knowledge of the speakers and needed more time to reflect,” outcomes of the forum according to center highlighted.

During discussions, the center with a couple of companies and the disability support center in Mansoura University agreed on launching the “Virtually … We are Equal” initiative where the UCCD will help equip students with kinetic disabilities with the skills needed for certain careers such as social media management, sales, and so on.

The Mansoura UCCD forum was a win-win situation as it has helped in reaching out to 40,000 people in a total of two days through virtually sharing the event on Facebook Live.

“Yes we have all been shaken by all these unusual circumstances and the COVID-19 virus that has been transformed into a worldwide pandemic, but our unbowed UCCD community has proven that its core and primary goal is to continue to serve its students even during those hard and unprecedented times,” says Taghrid El-Sayed deputy chief of party to the project.