Makhad Trust

The Makhad Trust

The Makhad Trust, a small charity based in Cheltenham, works to promote the relationship between environment and spirit, providing a meeting space between the two.  The work brings together people from UK and indigenous peoples, mostly in Sinai, Egypt providing working journeys on small projects.

Helen works as the Educational Development Manager to find and build links with the Makhad Trust to schools, colleges and Universities with the aim of promoting the work of the trust, small scale fundraising and leading groups of pupils and students on journeys to build small dams.

As well as working journeys, the Makhad Trust also runs Retreat Journeys.

Sustainable Tourism

The journeys undertaken by participants to Sinai are among some to the best examples of  sustainable tourism.  Many of the journeys help the Bedouin directly whereas most tourists visiting Egypt are contributing to the problems the Bedouin have with lack of water.  For the last 10 years the rainfall pattern has changed and led to draught – it is possible that this is due to climate change.  Wells have dried up and the Bedouin gardens, so important as a source of food have been dying. To add to their problems, it is thought that the vast quantity of water being pumped out of the water table around Sharm-El-Sheik to service the tourist industry, is causing the Sinai water table to drop.

The Makhad Trust has been instigating projects to deepen wells and build small dams to hold back the occasional rainwater that now falls.  As a result of this work many Bedouin families have been able to revive their gardens and have more food to eat and produce to sell.  The dams have been a collaborative effort between the Bedouin and British working parties.

Working Journeys

You can join one of the magical working journeys in Sinai by visiting the Makhad Trust website for information or by contacting Helen.  The next working journey is to build a Dam in the high mountains near St Katherines from in April next year.  The dam will help to provide much needed water for 30 Bedouin families.  This is an open journey for anyone to join led by Rachel Devas and Dick Stainer, two of our trustees.  See the Makhad Trust website for more information.

Retreats

The next Retreat to Sinai in April 2013, will be part of the SKGR journey which includes building a dam.  This will be a repeat of the journey they made last April.  The desert has been a special place for those seeking spiritual connection – it is a  journey into the desert silence and our own souls.  Mystics, prophets and hermits have been leading lives of devotion in the fantastically beautiful Sinai desert for hundreds of years.  The beauty  and the emptiness of the landscape give us the space  we need to reconnect with ourselves.

The beauty of the desert

More information about the Makhad Trust

 For 10 years we have been working with the Bedouin of
South Sinai on small scale water conservation projects.  As well as the mountain tribe of Jebillya around St Katherines monastery we have also worked with the Mouzaina tribe at Nuwamis.
Both tribes have a long history, the Jebillya tribe was founded around 5th Century from Romanians shipped in by Emperor Justinian to support the monks of the newly built St Katherines monastery, who then intermarried with the local bedouin.  They established orchard gardens in the mountains that are still there but falling into disuse as a nine year drought has caused trees to die and very little is able to grow.  The garden owners have had to look elsewhere for an income and that has been from the increasing tourist trade, increasing that is until this year which has seen a plummet in numbers due the uprisings of the Arab Spring.
The Makhad Trust has been working with the Bedouin on water conservation projects to help restore the mountain gardens and make the most of the small amounts of rain through building small dams high up in the mountains.  As well as raising money for the gardens we have been taking out parties of people to work alongside the bedouin building the dams and repairing the gardens.  In our work over the last 7 or 8 years we have made strong links with local people and been a small force for empowering change with the marginalised semi nomadic bedouin.  Makhad means meeting place in arabic, and one of our charitable aims is to bring about meetings between people in the west and nomadic peoples for mutual benefit.

Links with Schools, Colleges and Universities

Amria’s Dam March 2009

We want to expand the numbers of colleges and universities we work with on these projects.  Currently we are taking parties of students from University of Gloucestershire, Concordia University in the US and Leeds Met University as well as schools.  The journeys can focus on geographical, geopolitical, historical and archeological, religious, cultural aspects of the Sinai and it is a rich experience for them all.  There is a You Tube video made by students on the Leeds Met journey to watch.
The dam above and below is one of 12 small dams built so far. The winter of 2010/2011 brought rain and most of the dams filled.
You will find lots more video clips on You Tube made by other students and pupils.  See King Ethelberts School and interviews with the Bedouin - Interviews

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