“We all love fashion, but often fail to acknowledge the effects it has on the environment and how damaging it can be."

The idea of the startup app stems from the Entrepreneurship and Innovation course offered by the Business School. The course mirrors the real-world early stage of the entrepreneurial process where students are given the chance to build a business model throughout the semester resulting in a final pitch. 

“We had identified the problem of sustainability in the fashion industry early on in the course. However, we just did not know how to go about creating a solution. We first toyed with the idea of creating a fintech app, but it lacked the spark,” Afifi said, “After weeks of research and brainstorming, we landed on the idea of ScanHa.” 

 The app aims to shift the stigma surrounding the cost of sustainable fashion. “We all love fashion but often fail to acknowledge the effects it has on the environment and how damaging it can be,” Abu Shahba said. “We want to raise awareness by encouraging consumers to make informed decisions. Whether actively seeking sustainable choices or new to the concept, our objective is to simplify the process of sustainable purchases for the consumer to benefit both the society and the environment."

The ScanHa team credits their success in part to their educational journey at AUC< where classes allowed them to hone their pitching skills as well as their ability to identify weak points in their initial thought process to determine the viability of their project. 

"Their ultimate victory in Afretec further solidified their excellence."

“Research was instrumental to our success," said Afifi. "Our idea is complex, so clarity and cohesiveness were key. Thanks to the power of research, the guidance of our professor and AUC equipping us with an extensive research base, we were able to readily and smoothly answer the Q&A section of the competition.” 

Moataz Darwish '95, associate professor in the School of Business and course instructor, noted, “This team kept passionately exploring their problem space of fast fashion and persistently iterating between multiple solutions for most of the semester whilst their classmates were already finalizing their projects. Their ultimate victory in Afretec further solidified their excellence."

Darwish commended ScanHa’s team diversity. “By combining various thinking styles and personalities, they achieved a well-rounded approach that propelled them to success,” he said.

“I want to reshape Egypt's approach to mitigating natural hazards to ensure the safety and resilience of our communities, particularly with climate change taking its toll and Upper Egypt’s susceptibility to floods,” said Haggag. "People have to be ready; Mother Nature is in charge. Shifting weather patterns can trigger natural disasters, and we have to be able to adapt.”

Natural hazards and natural disasters are actually different, explained Haggag: “A natural hazard is something that can cause risk for people or communities. For instance, if you have a thunderstorm happening in the middle of nowhere, it will not affect people. It's just a hazard. But when the same thunderstorm happens in a city, it can affect people, buildings and infrastructure. This is when it becomes a natural disaster,” said Haggag. 

The number of climate-induced disasters has tripled in the past four decades and is expected to double in the next 13 years, according to the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters. The impacts are also severe, with approximately 1 million deaths attributed to climate-induced disasters and around 250,000 deaths expected to occur in the next 10 years, as per the Consumer News and Business Channel. Furthermore, the intensity of these disasters, along with life and property losses, is rapidly increasing. In the last two decades alone, climate-induced disasters have resulted in global damages of approximately $1.7 trillion, as reported by the Asian Development Bank. 

“This highlights the critical need for proactive measures in disaster risk reduction and climate resilience,” Haggag states. 

"People have to be ready; Mother Nature is in charge. Shifting weather patterns can trigger natural disasters, and we have to be able to adapt.”

Resilience, according to Haggag, refers to the ability of a system to bounce back to its original operations after a disaster hits. “This is evident in any power system, for instance, where redundancy is created by having backup transmission lines to transfer the load if one line fails –– preventing the collapse of the entire system.”

Community resilience is similar but focuses on people. “It’s about a community’s capacity to rebound from a disaster and recover in a sustainable and effective way in the presence of any challenges,” said Haggag, adding, “I am a construction engineer, but my work is all about communities, not just buildings. While pursuing my PhD at McMaster University, I decided to start developing models that could predict what would happen to our communities if a disaster hits.” 

So how can we make our community resilient? How can we enable it to absorb shocks and quickly get back to its normal operations? 

“The answer lies in maximizing the robustness, resilience and agility of our community by effectively managing the redundancy and resourcefulness of our people alongside our critical infrastructure systems,” said Haggag. “This was the base of my work. I was concentrating on climate-induced disasters because this is what we cannot foresee. Communities need to be prepared, and it’s important to raise awareness of proactive measures to mitigate and respond to disasters among policymakers, industry professionals, the general public and, of course, our students.”