SEKEM WAHAT

Greening The Desert

Our Vision

With SEKEM Wahat Greening The Desert we’re reclaiming about 1.000 hectar of desert land and turning it into fertile land again.
We’re encouraging people to build a sustainable community, that is relying on the pricipals of bio-dynamic agriculture.

With SEKEM Wahat Greening The Desert we’re reclaiming about 1.000 hectar of desert land and turning it into fertile land again. We’re encouraging people to build a sustainable community, that is relying on the pricipals of bio-dynamic agriculture.

Ecology

The reclamation of desertificated land helps to combat climat change effects by recultivating the hostile land trough bio-dynamic agriculture.

Social Life

The main goal for SEKEM Wahat is the creation of a community life, in which people work, live, share and develop together.

Culture

SEKEM is deeply convinced, that art and culture related activities contribute to humans development and to the unfolding of individual potentials.

Economy

With SEKEM’s Economy of Love approach we make sure, that our business activities are sustainable and ensure and secure the livelihood of everyone within the chain.

SEKEM Wahat
Creating out of nothing

According to this motto the SEKEM community started already in 1997 on the mother farm in the north eastern Nile Delta with the transformation of Egypts desert landscape to create new fertile land for organic agricultural use. Today, the SEKEM farm is a natural habitat for a vast number of flora and fauna and a place where people from different cultural backgrounds work, live, share, learn and develop together.

With the ongoing project Greening The Desert, SEKEM is facing the major challenges of today. In times of tremendous population growth, increasing air and water pollution, decreasing biodiversity, great climate change effects, unsecured jobs and social challenges, SEKEM wants to create a place that serves the needs of a sustainable community. This place is located 300km south west from Cairo and is called Wahat.

SEKEM Wahat
Creating out of nothing

According to this motto the SEKEM community started already in 1997 on the mother farm in the north eastern Nile Delta with the transformation of Egypts desert landscape to create new fertile land for organic agricultural use. Today, the SEKEM farm is a natural habitat for a vast number of flora and fauna and a place where people from different cultural backgrounds work, live, share, learn and develop together.

With the ongoing project Greening The Desert, SEKEM is facing the major challenges of today. In times of tremendous population growth, increasing air and water pollution, decreasing biodiversity, great climate change effects, unsecured jobs and social challenges, SEKEM wants to create a place that serves the needs of a sustainable community. This place is located 300km south west from Cairo and is called Wahat.

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The 2nd phase

Started: 01.02.2020

After we successfully finished the 1st Phase with 400.000€ funding,
we’re starting now with confidence and joy in the 2nd Phase.

Funding in progress

53% 53%

Start

212.106€ / 400.000€

We invite you to become a part of our projet and to contribute in the greening of the Egyptian desert

Contribute now

Share this project with your friends and help us to make SEKEM Wahat more popular

2. Phase

Start: 01.02.2020

After we successfully finished the 1st phase with a 400.000€ funding, we’re starting now with confidence and joy in the 2nd phase.

Funding in progress

Start

35.000€ / 400.000€

We invite you to become a part of our projet and to contribute in the greening of the Egyptian desert

Contribute now

Share this project with your friends and help us to make SEKEM Wahat more popular

How SEKEM Wahat
will look like in the future

Based on our vision for SEKEM Wahat we want to develop a self-sufficient community in which people from different cultural backgrounds come together to share the same mission.
With the implementation of our core program, we want to contribute to human development and to the unfolding of the individual potentials in the new community in SEKEM Wahat.
In 2020, we will continue with the conscious usage of precious resources of water, soil and energy. Therefore we choose pivots powered by solar systems to reclaim our 530 hectares of desert land and transform the desert to be a healthy living soil organism based on biodynamic principles.

How SEKEM Wahat
will look like in the future

Based on our vision for SEKEM Wahat we want to develop a self-sufficient community in which people from different cultural backgrounds come together to share the same mission.
With the implementation of our core program, we want to contribute to human development and to the unfolding of the individual potentials in the new community in SEKEM Wahat.
In 2020, we will continue with the conscious usage of precious resources of water, soil and energy. Therefore we choose pivots powered by solar systems to reclaim our 530 hectares of desert land and transform the desert to be a healthy living soil organism based on biodynamic principles.

Our goals at a glance

CORE PROGRAM

SEKEM is convinced that the potential of one individual is evolving with the inclusion of arts and culture. Hence, here at SEKEM-Wahat we focuses on offering people and students space for their individual development and potential unfolding instead of providing them only with universal teaching and learning models. At SEKEM-Wahat we want to evoke questions instead of giving answers

BASIC HEALTH CARE

With our integrative health care approach we look holistically at each individual. We take into consideration the relation between body, mind and spirit. We start with the implementation of a healthcare booklet to record and monitor the well-being and health condition of the community members. On a regular basis first aid courses are held to provide self reliability and confidence.

EDUCATION

We believe that holistic education enhances the unfolding of human potential and encourages people to find their own interests. Therefore, we started implementing a holistic educational program for the community members.
For illiterate employees we started the Maho el omia program to educate and prepare them to continue their education in a school program later on.

COMPOST PRODUCTION

Brown Gold, can be considered the inofficial second name for compost – and that for a good reason. Reclaiming desert land with biodynamic agriculture is based on providing nutrients by adding healthy compost to the sandy soil. Mainly organic matter and cow manure are mixed up and take roughly 3 months to turn into the compost that we are applying to our fields. Each hectare of reclaimed desert land requires more than 70 tons of compost just in the first year and over time the sand turns slowly brown.

For the first 63 hectares we used almost 4.500 tons of compost. We just recently started to prepare a new compost production site in SEKEM-Wahat, which quickly will be ready for producing up to 10.000 tons of compost annually.

CROP SORTS

Biodiversity is a must have for a vital and healthy ecosystem, hence, we’re cultivating a diversity of crops on our pivot fields.
In the first phase we started with the cultivation of biodynamic camomile, peppermint and spearmint. For the second phase, we plant additionally peanuts,sparment and peppermint.

SOLAR SYSTEM

Pumping water for the irrigation of plants is energy intensive. Since SEKEM is aiming to keep all their agricultural activities carbon positive and sees an immense potential in bio-dynamic agriculture to mitigate climate change, the only reasonable solution for the energy supply of our new pivots is obviously: Solar energy!

Each of our new Pivots will be equipped with a solar system that minimises the CO2 impact of the energy intensive irrigation and thus makes our project – as a whole – carbon positive.

LAND RECLAMATION

With 96 percent of Egypt being desert, fertile land is a scarce resource in the land of the nile. The only way of self sufficiency and long term food security is to move to Egypt’s untouched areas in the desert and use the needed water resources as efficiently as possible. In one year allone SEKEM re-greened 63 additional hectares of desert land. With only 300 square meters of arable land per person in Egypt this new area resembles what is used to feed more than 2000 people.

PIVOTS

A pivot irrigation system is able to water 50 fadan areas of land with a reduced input . It uses only a fraction of the water used compared to common irrigation techniques here in Egypt. Therefore, for the second phase,we want to install another 3 solar power pivot systems to irrigate 63 ha of Egyptian desert land.