Encouragement costs almost nothing

In Faisal, on the Giza side of the river, a university student has set up a folding table in the entrance of her building. In the evenings after iftar, younger children from the street bring their schoolbooks down, and she helps them with whatever they are stuck on. Nobody asked her to. Nobody pays her.

Most of the adults who pass say nothing. Not because they disapprove. They simply do not think it is their place, or they assume that supporting her would mean joining in, giving money, or signing up to something.

It would not. There are countless ways to back someone who is trying to improve things, and nearly all of them are small. A neighbour stopping to say his son finally understands fractions. Someone leaving a box of pencils by the table. A shopkeeper telling a customer who is behind it. A message to her mother saying the building feels different in the evenings. Each takes a few seconds, and none of them costs anything anyone would miss.

People who start these things usually run on very little. A few weeks of silence and the table folds back into the cupboard. A few kind words and it lasts into the next school year, and someone else offers to take a night.

If we want the street, the city, or the trade we work in to get better, the people already trying are the most efficient place to put a little warmth. They have done the hard part, which is starting. Ours is noticing, and saying so out loud.