About 8,000 girls will benefit from a pilot scheme that aims to achieve gender equality in Egypt.
The Noura initiative led by the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), and backed by the Egyptian government and private and public sector partners, will build the social, health and economic assets of girls aged 10 to 18 through a 40-week intensive programme.
The UNFPA programme has been introduced in countries including Ethiopia, India, Guatemala and Uganda.
The pilot will begin in January and 8,000 trainees and 1,000 mentors are being selected for peer-to-peer support. The girls will be given training sessions on topics including health issues and financial literacy in partnership with NGOs.
Participants will be chosen from 20 villages in Sohag and Assiut in Upper Egypt. The project will be scaled up if funding is available, organisers said.
The Ministry of Planning and Economic Development, the National Council for Women, the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood, the Sawiris Foundation for Social Development and the government of the Netherlands are the main partners for the project.
“More diversity, more gender equality leads to more well-being and more prosperity,” said Frederika Meijer, the UNFPA Egypt representative, at the launch event during El Gouna Film Festival on Egypt’s Red Sea coast.
“There are around nine million adolescent girls in Egypt,” Ms Meijer said. “Investing in them and allowing them to reach their full potential means investing in the entire population. We must bridge the gender gap and prepare these young girls for the future as active and skilled citizens.”
She pointed to the urgent need for action, citing the World Economic Forum’s 2021 gender gap report that said it will take another 136 years to reach gender equality in the world.
“Hence it is important for the world and for Egypt to invest in girls now, so that they will become women who can reach their full potential and who can achieve gender equality at a faster pace,” Ms Meijer said.
Egypt ranked 129th out of 156 countries in the annual gender gap report, gaining five places from the year before.
There has been improvement, with 27 per cent of Egypt’s parliamentary representatives and 24 per cent of ministers being women, but progress has been slow, the report said.
“Empowering Egyptian women, or empowering women at large, is empowering a nation. And investing in young girls is empowering the future of the nation,” said Maya Morsy, president of the National Council for Women.
Planning Minister Hala El Said highlighted government programmes already in place designed to improve the skills and participation rate of women in the workforce, eliminate illiteracy and promote family planning.
“Fertility decisions that affect adolescent health are grounded in a broad socioeconomic context and underline complex behavioural dynamics, which in turn affect decisions about marriage, childbearing, education and health care,” said Ms El Said.
She highlighted the need to empower adolescent girls, boost self-awareness of their health and economic risks to give them “greater bargaining power and more decision-making power about their future”.
International Co-operation Minister Rania Al Mashat said the focus on adolescent girls was important to support Egypt’s 2030 vision in line with the UN's 17 sustainable development goals.
The Noura initiative addresses the main goal of gender equality, but will also contribute to at least seven other goals, including quality education, no poverty and good health and well-being.
UNFPA signed two agreements with the Sawiris Foundation and the Export Development Bank of Egypt to support the Noura initiative.
The Sawiris Foundation focuses on pressing issues facing marginalised Egyptians such as poverty, unemployment, lack of health services and limited access to quality education.
“We work a lot with girls in their younger years and women, but 10 to 18 is generally an age group that we don’t target and it’s very important for reducing early childhood marriage, preventing female genital mutilation, promoting reproductive health, and so on,” Noura Selim, executive director of the Sawiris Foundation, told The National.
THE SPECS
Engine: 1.5-litre, four-cylinder turbo
Transmission: seven-speed dual clutch automatic
Power: 169bhp
Torque: 250Nm
Price: Dh54,500
On sale: now
Stormy seas
Weather warnings show that Storm Eunice is soon to make landfall. The videographer and I are scrambling to return to the other side of the Channel before it does. As we race to the port of Calais, I see miles of wire fencing topped with barbed wire all around it, a silent ‘Keep Out’ sign for those who, unlike us, aren’t lucky enough to have the right to move freely and safely across borders.
We set sail on a giant ferry whose length dwarfs the dinghies migrants use by nearly a 100 times. Despite the windy rain lashing at the portholes, we arrive safely in Dover; grateful but acutely aware of the miserable conditions the people we’ve left behind are in and of the privilege of choice.
Herc's Adventures
Developer: Big Ape Productions
Publisher: LucasArts
Console: PlayStation 1 & 5, Sega Saturn
Rating: 4/5
The National's picks
4.35pm: Tilal Al Khalediah
5.10pm: Continous
5.45pm: Raging Torrent
6.20pm: West Acre
7pm: Flood Zone
7.40pm: Straight No Chaser
8.15pm: Romantic Warrior
8.50pm: Calandogan
9.30pm: Forever Young
Benefits of first-time home buyers' scheme
- Priority access to new homes from participating developers
- Discounts on sales price of off-plan units
- Flexible payment plans from developers
- Mortgages with better interest rates, faster approval times and reduced fees
- DLD registration fee can be paid through banks or credit cards at zero interest rates
In numbers: China in Dubai
The number of Chinese people living in Dubai: An estimated 200,000
Number of Chinese people in International City: Almost 50,000
Daily visitors to Dragon Mart in 2018/19: 120,000
Daily visitors to Dragon Mart in 2010: 20,000
Percentage increase in visitors in eight years: 500 per cent
The specs
Engine: 4.0-litre flat-six
Torque: 450Nm at 6,100rpm
Transmission: 7-speed PDK auto or 6-speed manual
Fuel economy, combined: 13.8L/100km
On sale: Available to order now
Specs
Engine: Duel electric motors
Power: 659hp
Torque: 1075Nm
On sale: Available for pre-order now
Price: On request
More from Neighbourhood Watch
What can victims do?
Always use only regulated platforms
Stop all transactions and communication on suspicion
Save all evidence (screenshots, chat logs, transaction IDs)
Report to local authorities
Warn others to prevent further harm
Courtesy: Crystal Intelligence
MOUNTAINHEAD REVIEW
Starring: Ramy Youssef, Steve Carell, Jason Schwartzman
Director: Jesse Armstrong
Rating: 3.5/5
Sreesanth's India bowling career
Tests 27, Wickets 87, Average 37.59, Best 5-40
ODIs 53, Wickets 75, Average 33.44, Best 6-55
T20Is 10, Wickets 7, Average 41.14, Best 2-12
The specs
- Engine: 3.9-litre twin-turbo V8
- Power: 640hp
- Torque: 760nm
- On sale: 2026
- Price: Not announced yet
Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
