Although originally a training center working mostly for schools and educational institutions, Eedama has since 2017 very early in its existence been asked to contribute to events, festivals, music concerts… in its own way!

Eedama had some doubts at the beginning on how we could do that: Should we simply make a modified version of our kids’ workshops? Should we make signage, posters? Should we hold talks?

With time, and with the growing number of events eedama have been contributing to, we fine-tuned our approach, trying to combine between Eedama’s values and our need for financial sustainability. Indeed, although we do not make actual profit, we do need to cover costs and we do not compromise on paying our people fairly. So here, we would like to share with our readers the main ingredients of our recipe that has now reached some maturity.

-As a starting point, Eedama is all about concrete impact, our motto is ‘Realize Rethink React’ and we insist on the react, our approach can be summarized in ‘understanding for acting’.

Key Insights and Lessons Learned

Taking this into account, we noticed, with growing experience, that:

• We need to mix the nature of our activities: An event is usually open to the public, and even if there is often a main target audience (families, fancy youngsters, corporates…) it always gathers a large diverse audience, therefore, we noticed we can’t depend on one point. Of course, we are lucky enough to have a diverse portfolio in hand, and although the challenge is to use it all at once, that is definitely something that increases the chance of having an impact.
• We need to be flexible: When we plan something at a specific time it does not mean that it will happen exactly at this timing. Same goes for the location: A public event is inherently unpredictable, so go with the flow!
• We need to talk people’s language(s):  I don’t just mean the languages as in English, Arabic, French… but also children, adult, scientist, corporate, people on a weekend, and people on a mission! We are the ones who want to send the message, we need to adapt.
• Be innovative, but keep the safe side as well: Developing new types of activities and testing them, certainly does not mean dropping the old ones!

Experiences That Shaped Our Approach

Now let’s tell you about some of the experiences that made us reach those conclusions:

• When we first were called by Wasla Festival, we came with workshops for kids, at an alternative music festival – It was a great experience, but it was difficult to not notice that we were not talking the audience’s language. People were extremely nice and helpful, many participated and loved it, and still, did we make an impact? Not sure. For the following event, we decided to consider people’s language preferences.
• When we came to Times Square Center to run part of their ‘Busy Little Hands’ festival, we had activities specifically prepared for families, and we could feel the match: Shared activities, with playful aspects where both parents and children can make teams and play together, as well as some hands on activities for the kids whose parents simply wanted to roam around.
• In 2019, we were invited to make significant contributions to the Masdar Festival, which marked the start of an ongoing and repeated collaboration. Although we applied similar concepts, we soon realized we were missing something. While families were definitely present, Masdar attracted other audiences, particularly individuals who were already and genuinely interested in sustainability
• How to talk to those? Well, the following year we developed a new way of talking to the audience: The multiage talk which integrates both content and competition, to feed interested minds and hungry energetic kids! Thanks to the new forces joining Eedama’s team, we also developed the idea of street volunteering-based theatre, which provided a new and very relevant way to interact with an audience.

Theatre Performances at Events

The theatre included performing skits that revolved around environmental topics such as pollution, carbon footprint, water importance, and the environmental crisis. We divided the volunteers into groups and asked them to choose a topic to perform repetitively for five minutes throughout the day. Each group consisted of a director (holding a play sign) that invites the audience to press play for the actors to start performing. After the act, the director engages the audience by asking a series of questions to test their awareness and ensure that the performance’s message is clear.

With every event Eedama takes part of, we progress and evolve in order to improve our quality for future events. This is us talking to you, so we can’t miss this opportunity to tell you that we’re open to running more events and festivals, and to tell you about the impressive list of events we contributed to.

Please click here to be redirected to some of our previous events. And check our Instagram page to see… All of them!