About the Founder
Dawzana was founded by Passant Elbadrawy, an Egyptian-Yemeni cultural manager, consultant, and trainer based in Cairo, Egypt, with 10 years of expertise in the field of arts and culture. Before 2015, Elbadrawy worked as a copywriter and a translator at MAD Solutions. From press releases to booklets, Elbadrawy created English for prestigious festivals, including the Cairo International Film Festival, Alexandria Film Festival, and Ismailia International Film Festival for Documentaries and Short Films. Her portfolio includes the festival press kit for Francois Verster's The Dream of Shahrazad(2014) and English subtitling of Hani Khalifa's Sukkar Mor (2015).
In 2015, Elbadrawy made a career shift into the field of cultural development, taking on the role of Program Officer at Tamasi Performing Arts Collective, which operated across Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Palestine. At Tamasi, she led grants development, outreach while also managing coordination, developing training modules, and conducting training in communication skills, fundraising, and proposal writing. She worked closely with both funders and grassroots organizations to support the sustainability of independent performing arts initiatives.
In 2022, Elbadrawy received a grant from theEU's Med Dialogue for Rights and Equalityto implement a common action, which included a masterclass on self-presentation for artists. The common action also included online educational episodes.
Elbadrawy later joined the Tahrir Cultural Center at The American University in Cairo (AUC) as a Project Manager until 2024.
Over the years, she has designed and facilitated trainings in collaboration with the British Council Yemen and the Goethe-Institut in Amman, Sudan, and Cairo, working directly with artists from Sudan, Yemen, Egypt, Palestine, and Jordan, with a special focus on project design, self-presentation, and fundraising in challenging and under-resourced contexts.
In 2025, Elbadrawy was awarded a grant by EUNIC Egypt to implement the first edition of "On Track," a capacity-building program designed to equip music managers with technical and managerial tools to support the independent arts ecosystem in Egypt. The program has evolved to include other discplines and artistic mediums to offer access to knowledge and put artists on the right track