Class 55 Sorting Through Our Assumptions October 23, 2026 By Class55 Share: Lessons in leadership and community from Cairo’s recycling businesses to SEKEM’s farms A church built into a mountainside and a neighborhood known as “Garbage City” might seem like two separate stories. During our visit to Cairo, we began to understand how closely they belong together.At the foot of the Mokattam Hills, families in the Zabbaleen community make their living collecting, sorting, and recycling waste from across Cairo. By some estimates, the Manshiyat Naser neighborhood handles 5,000 tons each day. That material comes into the same streets where people live, attend school, and run businesses. Across Cairo’s Zabbaleen communities, residents are estimated to recycle more than 80 percent of what they collect. Above those streets sits the Cave Church, the Monastery of Saint Simon the Tanner. The mountainside rises around the seating, with carvings that draw your eyes across the stone. Members of the surrounding community helped build it over time, and we wondered how many hands had contributed to the place where we sat.What stayed with us was the peace we felt there. Beside a neighborhood handling millions of pounds of waste, we sat quietly, taking in the space. We lingered, wondering how somewhere so close to that much activity could feel so peaceful. For a few moments, there was nothing we needed to do but sit and pay attention.Back on the streets, the smell of food scraps breaking down was strong. Animals wandered nearby, and bags of collected materials filled sidewalks, alleyways, and open doors. People looked up from their work to greet us with smiles, waves, and warm welcomes. Many of us had arrived expecting extreme poverty to define the experience. We had pictured people with few choices, working in difficult conditions simply to survive. The visit challenged those assumptions. The people we met were welcoming, neatly dressed, and skilled in their work. As we listened, we began to recognize something familiar: family businesses built over generations. Family Business, Familiar LessonsFor those of us in agriculture, learning the family business often starts young. We watch our parents and grandparents, learn the processes, and eventually find ways to improve them. We heard similar stories here. Families had passed down their knowledge and expanded their operations, evolving from collectors into recyclers and manufacturers. We even heard about families selling their farms to invest more deeply in recycling. What initially felt unfamiliar began to resemble the businesses many of us know at home. We had more in common than we expected.We learned that each material required someone who knew how to sort and prepare it, who could use it, and what it was worth. Some businesses processed bottles, wire, and plastic into raw materials for other industries. Others made finished products to sell.At the Association for the Protection of the Environment (APE), we learned how recycling supported education, health care, and employment for women. We watched women working at wooden looms and saw used coffee capsules and aluminum pull tabs incorporated into handmade bags. Looking at the finished products, we could appreciate how much skill and creativity went into making them. We also visited a Montessori school. Nearby was a soccer field that we learned was supported by FIFA and built using recycled materials from the community. Seeing the school and field helped us understand more about the neighborhood where these families were raising their children.One detail brought the visit directly back to agriculture. Bags holding collected materials were made from the same material we use to package agricultural products. It made us wonder: What happens to our packaging after it leaves our facilities? How much do we know about where it ends up, and what responsibility do we have?We heard concerns about possible changes to collection systems and the relocation of receiving centers. For the families we met, those changes could affect businesses they had spent years building. It was a reminder of how much leaders need to understand before making decisions that affect someone else’s livelihood.On the bus afterward, we kept talking about how much our thinking had changed. We still had questions about the conditions we had seen. But now we also had people, businesses, and stories to consider.The quiet of the Cave Church stayed with us, too. Before we understood much about the neighborhood, we had sat in a beautiful place its residents had helped build, a place that brought them together.How often do we enter a community or workplace ready to offer answers before understanding what people have already figured out? SEKEM: Growing a CommunityAfter a morning spent learning how families passed their skills down, we carried those conversations with us to our next stop, SEKEM. An hour of Cairo traffic gave way to an oasis of palm trees and eucalyptus, green on every side, until a white and yellow two-story guest house came into view. We were greeted with cool towels, cold water, and a glass of tea. SEKEM brings farms, businesses, and schools together on one campus, and we were curious to see how it was preparing its own next generation, and how the people we’d meet there defined success.Rafik Costandi, a key member of the SEKEM Initiative, led us through the schools, which run from kindergarten through grade 9, with a trade school for grades 10 through 12. Children with special needs learn in parallel classes. In the trade school, students study carpentry, electrical work, culinary arts, textiles, farming, and machinery, and they don’t just practice on projects that get thrown away. The chairs and tables used around campus are built in their workshops. When a window breaks, students learn to replace it. The herbs they grow end up for sale in the on-site market. It was one of the clearest examples of leadership in action we saw on the trip: young people trusted with real work that the whole community depends on. We never made it far without a welcome. Little voices called out through the open classroom windows: “Hello!” “Nice to meet you!” “Hi, my name is Ahmed!” By the time we reached the outdoor amphitheater, a few elementary students had fallen in behind us, tooting on wooden flutes. The theater was built from wide concrete steps, and as our group found seats, the school orchestra and flute players were getting into formation for practice. We sat under the shade of a tarp, a cool breeze coming through, and listened to them play.From there we saw the hospital SEKEM is building, growing what began as a day clinic into a 15-bed hospital so families in the surrounding area can get medical care close to home.Lunch was a beautiful meal with fresh veggies, delicious pumpkin soup, fresh dates, followed by a selection of the teas SEKEM grows. Full and excited to get continue exploring the farm we got back on the bus.Before heading back, we visited the cows and met a very friendly camel. Everyone crowded around the pens to see the calves. Then came what they call their “brown gold”: the composting site, with long, neat rows of compost stretching across that part of the farm. They’re producing their own phosphorus and experimenting with making their own charcoal, putting back into the soil what the farm takes out. SEKEM left a real impression on us. Its students, employees, and land are all cared for as part of the same community, and each one gives something back. If we came looking for how the people here define success, we left with a pretty good answer. Leadership, at SEKEM, looks like care, love, and respect, practiced every day.The two places couldn’t have looked more different: one neighborhood built around what the city throws away, and one green campus where nothing seemed to go to waste. But both were held together by people who knew their work, took pride in it, and passed it on to the next generation. We came to Cairo expecting to learn about leadership from the people in charge. Instead, we kept finding it in the people doing the work, and we left reminded that good leaders slow down, listen, and let people show them what they’ve already figured out. Today gave us a lot to talk about and even more to reflect on. We’re grateful for our hosts, our classmates, and everyone who made this opportunity to learn and grow possible.Lauren Fann, Josh Enos, and Natalie Collins