With the aim of preserving the beaches and marine wildlife on Alexandria’s coast, the Alexandria Turtle and Wildlife Rescue Team headed by May Gawad launched a campaign on 30 September to clean the beaches. The initiative comes under the sponsorship of Alexandria Governor Muhammad Sultan.
According to Ms Gawad, the campaign began with cleaning the Glym and neighbouring Tulip beaches. Eagerly participating were students and teachers of a number of Alexandria schools, as well as members of Interact Club of Alexandria Cosmopolitan and Rotaract Club of Alexandria East.
The waste was removed by the NGO Nahdet Misr; the process was sponsored by PAWS N PAWS.
Ms Gawad said that her team has been volunteering animal rescue work since 2008and, though they only began working with wildlife some three years ago, they have helped rescue and release 44 sea turtle since then. The team includes the founder May Gawad; and members Barbara Hultman; Amer Mahmoud; Ahmed Ashraf;AbdulHakim al-Alawy; Hatem Moushir; and Wendy Freeman, the British Consul General in Alexandria, as honorary member.
The team conducts awareness campaigns in schools and cultural centers to raise children’s awareness of wildlife in Egypt. They work with several schools; the schools volunteer to buy the sea turtle and the students go on field s to release the turtle back into the sea.
The team held the first conference for Turtles in Egypt on 19 May 2017.
Watani International
2 October 2017