Egypt-Based Etawa3 is Building a Sports Volunteer Pipeline

Most people only see two hours of a sporting event. The kick-off, the noise, the goals, the celebrations, the trophy lift. What makes everything work, however, is the people behind the scenes - the ones we almost never see. The volunteers guiding media teams through tunnels, the people checking accreditation, and the staff coordinating ceremonies, athlete services and logistics long before the first whistle. For years, getting into that side of sport in Egypt could feel unnecessarily difficult. Opportunities were there, but rarely clear. Ahmad Karem experienced that difficulty first-hand — and he’s been working to change it for years through Etawa3, a digital platform he co-founded in 2021. “I’ve always been someone who loves sports deeply. My earliest work while I was still in university was already connected to sports,” Karem tells SceneSports. “I started young — around the age of 15 — by training at Youm7 in sports journalism, where I covered international football, not just Egyptian football.” Etawa3, meaning volunteering in Arabic, is an Egypt-based digital platform that connects people with volunteering opportunities at sports events, while helping organisers build trained teams for competitions and tournaments. Put simply, it tries to make one of sport’s hardest entry points easier to access. It started as Karem's graduation project during the last part of his FIFA Diploma programme held in Egypt and delivered in partnership with CIES, the Switzerland-based International Centre for Sports Studies. Since then, it has grown into a business working across several sports and multiple countries. “Before the diploma, I had some experience related to volunteering, but joining the diploma was a 180-degree turning point for me. It made me realise I had a clear passion for sports operations and volunteering,” he says. “Everything I had ever done was connected to sports in some way, but this was the part that really hooked me.” The course covered the business side of sport — management, law, communications, marketing and finance. It was there he met future business partner Amr Adel.  Their idea came from two obvious gaps. The first was people who loved sport but did not know these opportunities existed. The second was those who knew about volunteering roles, but found the process unclear, frustrating or difficult to navigate. The concept aimed to solve both. It finished first in Egypt, ahead of more than a dozen projects, before advancing to the FIFA University Network Awards against winning entries from other countries. It won there as well, and, by late 2022, the project had moved from theory into real events. Etawa3 began working across Egypt, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Morocco, building experience across different sports. It has also partnered with EG NADO, helping organise workshops for volunteers interested in becoming doping officers and supporting anti-doping operations during competitions. Football brought some of the bigger assignments. The company worked on Confederation of African Football events, including the final between Pyramids FC and Mamelodi Sundowns, as well as the Super Cup involving RS Berkane.  Its role included field ceremonies, flag presentations, media volunteers and matchday coordination, the kind of work fans barely notice unless something goes wrong. But the plan was never to stop at football.  “I’m building a real community of volunteers so I can help them reach the next step,” Karem says. “We want to expand further inside Egypt and across the region.”