Teachers and volunteers are using a mixture of patience and kindness to educate refugee children from nearly a dozen African countries in Egypt, Edward Yeranian writes for Voice of America. International organizations like the UNHCR, church groups and other local NGOs also contribute in the struggle to educate the children. Egyptian government schools are not always able to accept the children as they are already overcrowded and a large number of the would-be students do not speak Arabic. Maadi’s African Hope School is among those featured in the piece, which includes a three-minute-long embedded video.

Also worth noting in brief today:

• Wendy Ide describes “In the Last Days of the City” as part documentary, part fiction, in her review of the film for The Guardian. “It’s a work of gentle, swelling sadness that mourns a spirit of artistic and creative freedom quashed and it has become something of a cause celebre,” she writes.
• The Gouna Film Festival currently underway “promises to be an annual rendezvous for film professionals and film lovers from Egypt, the Arabic countries, and from all over the world,” according to Euronews.
• The Giza village of Haraniya is becoming an “unusual” tourist attraction for producing some of the world’s finest handmade carpets, rugs and tableaus, Amr Emam writes for Middle East Online.