By: Nabila Essam

Dr. Ashraf Sobhy, Minister of Youth and Sports,in the presence of author Essam Youssef and Nermine Shehab El-Din, Head of Marketing and Strategic Sustainability of the National Bank of Egypt, attended, on Sunday, October 5, the draw for the third season of Alabakera Competition for universities, which is held under the patronage of the Ministry of Youth and Sports and National Bank of Egypt, with the participation of 256 students representing 32 public and private universities.

Alabakera Program for Universities aims at encouraging youth to read and learn about various kinds of knowledge, talent identification, and positive interaction between the students in various fields, scientific and literary.

In his speech, Dr. Ashraf Sobhy, Minister of Youth and Sports, stressed that the Egyptian universities students are a great inspiration to the Ministry of Youth and Sports in many youth and sports activities, pointing out that because of the importance of this age-band, the Ministry allocated a number of administration concerned with the youth of Egyptian universities.

Sobhy added that universities students are the bright future of Egypt because of the knowledge, dream, ambitions, which they have, and the nobel goals they want to achieve to upgrade the position of Egypt among the people of the world, stressing the role of social responsibility of Community institutions towards Egypt's youth.

The Minister of Youth and Sports congratulated our Armed Forces and the political leadership on the occasion of the great October victory celebrations.

From his side, Novelist Essam Youssef thanked the Ministry of Youth and Sports for the good organization of the draw for the Competition and for taking the necessary precautionary measures in light of the new Coronavirus, and added that the success of the program is of no coincidence, but it's the result of the work and the struggle of the working group and big national institutions that believe in Egypt's youth.

Nermine Shehab El-Din said that the National Bank is keen on having a significant role in the development of society and Egypt's youth.

The third season of Alabakera Competition for universities is witnessing a new system for the matches, as the competition will be held in two phases. The first phase of the Competition witnessed matches held in the form of preliminary qualifying rounds among 32 participating universities, 3 private universities will win and 13 public universities will complete the competition in the second phase with round-robin matches.

The draw resulted in the following groups: The first group included the universities of Damietta, Assiut, Beni Suef, the Naval Academy. The second group included the universities of Sohag, Menoufia, Delta, and Tanta. The third group included the universities of Kafr El Sheikh, Cairo, Al-Azhar, and Fayoum The fourth and last group included universities of MTI, Mansoura , Sadat, and Suez.

It's worth mentioning that the Cup of the first season of Alabakera Competition for universities was won by Cairo University and the Cup of the second season was won by Tanta University.