Minister of Culture Dr. Nevine Al-Kilany, and Minister of Planning and Economic Development Dr. Hala El-Saeed, met on Saturday to discuss several files related to enhancing cooperation in traditional handicrafts, marketing mechanisms, and supporting Egyptian women.
The two sides discussed future cooperation mechanisms regarding unifying the efforts made by state institutions working in the fields of training, marketing, developing traditional crafts, opening new markets for productive families, developing the skills of women, and providing the necessary training opportunities in various fields related to handicraft products, and others.
The Minister of Culture emphasized that developing the field of handicrafts and heritage represents one of the most important axes for preserving the Egyptian identity, in addition to its huge ability to achieve great economic returns for families.
Kilany also referred to the efforts of the Heritage Crafts Center in Fustat, regarding the interest in sustaining work in the various areas of traditional handicrafts and providing opportunities for education, training, and ongoing marketing, in which women constitute 80%, which can be combined with the women’s economic empowerment project.
The Minister of Culture also affirmed the Ministry’s intention to provide more training and marketing opportunities for traditional handicraft products in the governorates, within the framework of the presidential initiative “Egypt’s Industrialists”, which adopts the training of young people on traditional crafts at the Heritage Crafts Center in Fustat, to start their own projects, as the coming period will witness cooperation with the Central Bank to provide soft loans to graduates of Industrial Egypt to start their own projects and seek the help of private institutions and civil society to market the production of these projects at home and abroad, noting that the first phase of the initiative to support graduates of Industrial Egypt will be in five governorates.
For her part, Dr. Hala El-Saeed, Minister of Planning and Economic Development, welcomed the cooperation with the Ministry of Culture to develop areas of handicraft work, which occupies an important place within the “Egypt Vision 2030”, as well as its association with sectors and societal groups worthy of attention, achieving the state’s goals in preserving heritage, and increasing Income for families producing these crafts, stressing that the coming period will witness the provision of several positive incentives for workers in this field, to achieve the maximum possible benefit in this regard.
She indicated that the Ministry of Planning will undertake coordination between the agencies working in the fields of supporting traditional crafts and empowering women, such as the Ministry of Social Solidarity, the National Council for Women, and the Small and Medium Enterprises Authority, to unify efforts to preserve and develop traditional crafts, as well as support Egyptian women in the age group between 18-45 years to work, earn a living, and be financially independent, and through these projects will be financed small and medium.
