Shaima Youssef co-founded the social movement El Raseef, a grassroots, crowd sourced approach to social change. The organization establishes a collaborative space that is firstly used a place for personal reflection, development, and learning, and in its second stage transforms into a location focused on cooperative creation and engagement with the greater community.
By creating an environment which supports free thinking, innovation, and cooperation, El Raseef is able to produce unique artisan exhibitions, festivals, and other events. In addition Shaima Youssef has organized an ongoing project, Wasf Masr, which portrays Egyptians by describing their histories, their relationships to the state, and their relationships with other Egyptians.
El Raseef enlists participants to travel throughout Egypt and document their experiences. The project also supports experiential learning for urban citizens by organizing trips into rural communities, coordinating an open source publishing effort for each region and organizing cross cultural events.