AUTHENTIC LOCAL LEADERSHIP

In 2018, research from Peak B, a UK-based Community Impact Research Group, found that 90% of small businesses believe that their businesses have a role to play in supporting the community. Despite the number of factors that make this challenging, cost and time most notably, 76% still do support their community in one way or another. 

A few weeks ago, myself and a group of friends from Riyadh, took Saudi’s National Day long weekend as an opportunity to go diving in Egypt just across the Red Sea. The exact location was a small town called Dahab, located on the southeast coast of the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt, approximately 80 km northeast of Sharm el-Sheikh. Formerly, Dahab was a Bedouin fishing village, however now it is considered to be one of Sinai's most treasured SCUBA diving destinations.

Through much research, our host Michael Ang, who has a famed and masochistic keenness for planning worldwide tours for our large group of friends found and booked with Liquid Adventures, a diving company located in Dahab.  The dive center that is owned and operated by Bassem Tamem, one of Dahab’s own born and bred community members, is not like any of the other dive centers I’ve ever been to around the world. Liquid Adventures is a clean and well-maintained property (not common in Egypt) that has a bed and breakfast, a fully equipped dive shop, and there is even a small café restaurant, that together all comes around a nice pool in the middle.  The rareness of the dive center comes from Bassem’s ethos that he instills in his business and which you can feel once visited and experienced. Liquid Adventures does not just want you to just come diving in Dahab, they really strive to make you a part of their family while taking you on an amazing adventure. It’s like that feeling when you go visit family or close friends in another country and they take you on those personalized tours of their cities.  Liquid Adventures sincerely makes you feel as one of their own and their team consists of people from all over the world, coming from different backgrounds, all with well-to-do perspectives. The commonality that they all share, is a profound love for diving and the underwater world.

Getting back to the business side of things though, Bassem is a young, mid-thirties small business owner and his dive center is the product of his entrepreneurial spirit. He began diving from a young age and he worked like many local Dahabian’s as a dive guide and an instructor.  He worked his way through his brothers dive shop located in Dahab as well and he learned the trade over the years. From my talks with Bassem during the trip, what he understood that many competitors did not was that small businesses, like any business, need to stand out from the crowd in order to survive. They must serve a legitimate need in the community and do it better than their competitors. He understood that striving to be unique, innovative, and better can result in a healthier marketplace and serve visitors much better. Thus, the Liquid Adventures team focused on building tight bonds with their community and because of that, their civic engagement was driven by the clients they see every day.

Bassem was not the type that wanted riches and fame, in fact he did not even want to leave Dahab. He just wanted to make it a better place to live in Egypt. He had seen and experienced how Egypt for years has been and continues to be plagued by corruption and scandal. His desire was to invest in his community and give back to those who have helped him, a very compassionate effort. When seeing him in action, you really do see his joy from the intangible benefit of giving—a pleasant feeling of connectedness and the satisfaction of at least trying to make the world a better place. And from that sense of giving bore those tangible benefits that served as good publicity for his business. I was most impressed with his annual outreach to many of the Egyptian teachers that work in Cairo. Each year at his own expense, Bassem buses in loads of teachers that I suspect would not be able to afford the experience on their own to his dive center in Dahab. They spend the weekend swimming, snorkeling and camping out under the stars at the Ras Mohammed National Park. When I further inquired as to why teachers from Cairo, he indicated that many of them had suffered the most during the Egyptian Revolution, and they were the key to educating the youth that he hopes will be raised with strong values and ethics to change the country for the better. 

Small business owners are an integral part of the communities in which they live and work. Thus, they tend to be cognizant of how their decisions may impact their neighbors. Bassem, like other local small business owners was involved in his community and he valued the people that were apart of it. He created jobs and mostly local jobs, so rather than having to commute to another city, staff work closer to home. 

For other positions though he had another setup for the staff, it’s essentially modeled off of the gig-economy. By doing this, his business saves resources in terms of benefits, office space and training. He also had the ability to contract with diving experts who might be too high-priced to maintain on a fulltime staff. Alfred, one of the dive masters pictured above-center, is a perfect example of someone that spends part of his time between Los Angeles and the other part in Dahab. He is someone that is so passionate, patient and knowledgeable to dive with that you cannot help but want to get to know him better. From Alfred’s perspective, Bassem’s setup improves his work-life balance over what is possible in most jobs.  His other full-time local staff including Ahmed a dive master, and Ismiley the dive centers Air Tech and Compressor Room manager, both had stories about how Bassem fosters their passions and their interests. As a business owner, he encourages his staff to focus on building relationships rather than being transactional with their clients, an effort that pays back in spades for the long run. 

We so often talk about a company’s social responsibility as if it were a new concept, but in reality, small businesses like Liquid Adventures have grinded away in their communities and acted upon local needs for a long time. Their efforts do not often receive the splashy coverage that large corporate donations garner, but they play an instrumental role in the success of communities. If you choose to visit Dahab for your next dive adventure, I hope you take the opportunity to visit Liquid Adventures and meet Bassem while you’re there. You’ll probably find him in his swim trunks and sandals meeting with guests, working with his team, or passed out asleep under dive gear from a long day’s work. 

Our Dive Sites:

Ras Abu Galum Coral Gardens

The Canyon

El Bells & The Blue Hole

Shark Reef & Yolanda Reefs

SS Thistlegorm Wreck

Bedouin Camping:

Ras Mohammed National Park

For More Info Visit: https://liquidadventuresdahab.com