By Hend GadAllah

Dr. Ashraf Sobhy, Minister of Youth and Sports, discussed with Dr. Osama Heikal, Minister of Information, and Dr. Muhammad Mukhtar Jumaa, Minister of Endowments, ways to launch the "Building the Egyptian Character" initiative. 

The Minister of Youth and Sports emphasized the need for integrative work between the various ministries to achieve the desired goal of the initiative, according to the directives of President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi.

Dr. Ashraf Sobhy pointed out that the ministry’s programs and projects aim to recover the distinctive Egyptian personal values, networking between Egyptian and Arab youth, rebuilding the human being, consolidating national identity, building personality in all fields, standing up to negative phenomena in society, developing talents, gaining experiences, and preparing a generation who is powerful to face rumors. The last program was the Ministry's initiative “Front with us”. 

The Minister of Youth and Sports stated that according to the latest statistics, the number of young people participating in the programs and activities of the ministry has reached 17 million participants in 260 programs and projects, adding that the ministry is working to track the different age stages and the problems they go through and count them through the National Center for Social and Criminal Research and the work on programs and activities to treat the negatives.

Osama Heikal, Minister of Information, explained that this meeting is the first to launch the initiative to build the Egyptian personality in implementation of the political leadership's mandates, discuss common frameworks with the relevant ministries, and will launch the initiative next September.

Dr. Mukhtar Jumah, Minister of Endowments, thanked the ministers of youth and information, stressing that the true building of the human being is education curricula with the support of the family and all surrounding society institutions to achieve the desired goal, and holding courses to qualify teachers with Islamic education curricula and courses held by the Egyptian Church for teachers in Christian education curricula and allocating the Friday sermon every month to deal with the Egyptian character-building initiative. 

While Dr. Suad Abdel-Rahim, Director of the National Center for Social and Criminal Research, explained a set of positives and negatives about the Egyptian personality, which the studies recently concluded that the positives represented in patience, innate intelligence, appreciation of reality, perseverance. The negatives represented in reliance on the past and sticking to it, exaggeration in repeating rumors, weak ability to initiate, emotional impulsivity, and a linguistic inability to express ideas.

The meeting was attended by the Ministry of Youth and Sports; Ashraf Saleh, Executive Director of the Ministry, Najwi Salah, Head of the Central Administration for Cultural and Voluntary Programs, Azza Al-Durri, Head of the Central Administration of  Vanguards , on the part of the Ministry of Information; major-general Hossam Mohsen, Minister’s Assistant, Dr. Hani Abul-Hassan, Adviser to the Minister, and Dr. Suad Abdel-Rahim, Director of the National Center for Social and Criminal Research.