HOW AM I ?
To be born and raised in place considered to be one of the most dangerous places with limited resources and came up with such a brilliant product is what they call " REAL SUCCESS ". MAJD MASHHARAWI is a Civil Engineer from Gaza who is capable of changing the stereotype about women in Gaza which stated that women are not suitable for engineering major as it requires hardworking and muscular abilities. She has faced rejection with huge determination and strong belief that ladies are the next leaders of the world.
During her life in university, she focused on understanding engineering in a creative way. One resource was not enough to feed their hunger of education. She is very passionate and dedicate towards her dream. She is always promising that she will leave this world making an unforgettable change and she already did !
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PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED?
1. Ash Problem: The world in the last few decades depends on Coal combustion to generate electricity. This process results an enormous amounts of Ash. This unusable by-product powder buried underground and causing direct pollution to the ground water as it permeates quickly through soil particles. Paying attention to the environmental condition attached to the coal combustion here in Gaza Strip, more than 7 tons are produced weekly by Alfakhoora places ( These place are burning coal and wood to generate high degrees of temperature for drying food pots) and this leads to uncontrolled environmental issue.
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2. Quality, Price and Weight of local ordinary blocks: As result of people continues focus on the blocks prices in Gaza as construction material especially the cement are very expensive and there are many political restrictions and SIEGE since 2006 , the price will be very high and so on most blocks manufacturing plants produce building blocks under estimated standards only to make more profits with very low quality of those building blocks. In addition, there is no lightweight blocks in Gaza as it is prohibited and not allowed to be exported form outside!
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IS GREENCAKE THE SOLUTION?
GreenCake blocks are the ultimate solution for these environmental problems as they consist of Ash which replaces the Aggregate and sand in ordinary blocks as a filler material. In addition, this powdered material gives many unique characteristics to the blocks such as creating a lighter blocks and much stronger ones. Moreover, the cost of the ordinary block is more than double the cost of GreenCake blocks. GreenCake blocks are also environmentally friendly blocks with high quality and low cost.
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VISION AND MISSION !
VISION : To use construction and look after our environment.
MISSION: Creating an environmentally friendly building blocks based on the disposal coal and wood ash given that more than 600 miliion tons of ash are produced annually in Gaza.
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WHERE GREENCAKE WERE AND WHERE DID IT REACH !
THE GREENCAKE JOURNEY FROM PAPER TO BLOCK ( BETWEEN RESEARCH AND APPLICATION )
1- GreenCake participated in a start-up incubator called Mobaderoon III project: Mobaderoon gave the team a lot of knowledge about the world of entrepreneurship, it opened many doors for them to establish the first prototype of GreenCake. Our team became more familiar and involved with the business environment and had meetings with many experts that provided the feedback needed in order to maintain success.
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2- MIT semi-finals
To move forward with the project, the team participated in MIT competition for Arab start-up projects and their project were selected among 70 participants to the semi-finalists of the competition, let me mention that more than five thousands entrepreneurs applied and only 70 were selected!. So therefore, this was a great boost to our GreenCake team. Unfortunately luck is not always on your side and the team were not able to travel because of the political situation and borders to complete the competition.
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3- Japan-Gaza Innovation Challenge : by 1st August, 2016 Majd decided to stop the project after all the setbacks she had faced. Miki – Majd’s friend - had advised her to apply for another challenge in Gaza held and funded by a Japanese team ( Japan Gaza Innovation Challenge). She attended the boot camp that they prepared and it was EXTREMELY inspiring ! The Japanese gave her the bright light of hope again, and she WON THE FIRST PRIZE !
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She was very happy to be a part of this venture with these talented Japanese people. They were always supporting her and gave her hope and power to continue this long and hard journey. She is going to go to Japan in March to get training there.
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NHK TALKED ABOUT US ♥
4- Our first practical construction was SEPTEMBER 2016 .
A man called Mr.Basheer contacted Majd and asked for blocks for his external wall which was (16X2.8X2) and (20X2.8X2) And here is the process:
A. Producing the blocks in the factory we rented for a week
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B. Lifting the blocks to the Targeted place
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C. Starting building with GREENCAKE
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And the Final one is :
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5- ZINC video : Here she is, with a video reaching more than 9.5 Million views !! to give hope to Gazan and the whole world that we are capable of making the IMPOSSIBLE POSSIBLE.
https://www.facebook.com/ThisIsZinc/videos/558914797642524/?pnref=story
WHY GREENCAKE AND NOT ORDINARY BLOCKS !
♥ TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERNS ♥
♥ BE THE CHANGE THAT YOU WISH TO SEE IN THE WORLD Gandhi ♥
For many decades, Gaza has been subjected to extreme situations such as three wars in 6 years and forced siege for 10 years. This has created a product and material shortage in the strip especially with respect to the construction materials, where the demand of building units is increasing annually. For example, the demand of building blocks has reached up to 40,000 blocks daily.
Simultaneously, with Gaza's situation, the world is facing a major environmental impact due to the inefficient action caused by industries around the globe. One of the major contributions in this environmental catastrophes is coal combustion, which results huge amounts of ash that are disposed of without concern for the environment and Gaza gets a share of 6 tons/weekly !
Because of the fact that Majd is a civil engineer, she is able to reunite environment and construction which has been one of my goals in this life thanks to her interests into material science. And to achieve this objective, she had to understand our construction conditions in Gaza strip and analyze it needs. This has motivated her friend Rawan as well as herself to create an urgent solution that could be adaptable, affordable, durable and always available to compensate the market gap. It all begins with our senior project ideas, which was mainly about light weight building blocks such as Aircrete blocks.
But it wasn't satisfying enough for Majd to apply something that had been already used and produced before. So she started her journey of research and it resulted with the birth of GreenCake blocks are mainly dependent on ash derived from coal combustion with other additives materials .
Despite the accomplishment we have reached with GreenCake, the road of it was full of obstacles and failures. However, every time there is a setback she is reminded that in order to achieve success we have to overcome these obstacles and delete the word failure from dictionary.
Replacing aggregate and sand with ash allowed the block to acquire its lightweight feature that can help Gazan to expand their areas and heights of buildings. Moreover, the price of GreenCake block is less than the ordinary block because of the efficient use of cement. I am seeking to find an alternative of cement and get rid of it from the block mixture as the price of it is increasing due to the siege.
When the team first got the minimum required strength of standard building blocks, Majd was overcome with happiness to know that she just got one step closer to her dream and goal in this life, which is leaving a fingerprint and making the world a better place to live in, starting from developing her own home country Gaza.
The journey of thousands miles starts with one step, she took a chance and took a step to show the world the power of a Palestinian woman as a nation builder and developer. I believe in that there are no limitations to our abilities if we use them significantly to serve our world.
HOW MUCH DO WE NEED AND FOR WHAT !
Purpose : We want to develop the GreenCake block and do further testing in order to establish a mini production line for GREENCAKE in Gaza and we are seeking to collect the required amount of fund to achieve this goal.
Production Flow chart : Here is the process of creating the GreenCake
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Budget Required to sustain the production line for the first year of production:
- Registration fees + insurance = 3,000 $
- Renting a plant ( with mixer + full automatic molding machine + forklift + molds ) = 10,000 $
- A plant for making blocks by using steam and high pressure= 10,000 $.
- Sieving machine ( locally manufactured ) = 5,000 $
- Raw materials for the first three months of working = 20,000 $
- Consultation and Technical supervision expenses = 5,000 $
- Marketing fees = 2,000 $
