Egypt’s annual World Youth Forum not to be launched as usual in Sharm El Sheikh city

CAIRO – 4 February 2023: The fifth edition of Egypt’s annual World Youth Forum (WYF) will not be launched as it was usual in the city of Sharm El Sheikh; Instead, this year's edition’s revenues from the sponsorship for the WYF will be directed to a number of initiatives, announced the executive director of the WYF Rasha Ragheb.

Ragheb added in a press conference on Saturday that an initiative for entrepreneurship and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) will be launched.

“Learn to Earn" initiative will also be launched to qualify Egyptian, Arab, African and expatriate youth for the labor market, she continued, saying that another program to meet the challenges of food security will be implemented as it aims at developing the capabilities of farmers and those in charge of food industries in Egypt and Africa.

The WYF will launch a program to support mental health to provide psychological support, especially for refugees, immigrants, and arrivals from areas of conflict and war, Ragheb said.

An international initiative will be launched at the fifth edition of Egypt’s World Youth Forum to support and empower refugees and migrants and enhance their integration into educational systems. In addition to this, a WYF Platform for Volunteers will be also launched to disseminate the culture of volunteering and support qualifying volunteers.

“The WYF was a youthful idea that received President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi’s support,” said WYF General Coordinator Basant Diaa El-Din at the conference.

The WYF has become an international platform that brings together world youth from different cultures and nationalities, she added, saying that the WYF has resulted in the National Training Academy where Egyptians and Africans received training programs.

“The World Youth Forum (WYF) has become a platform for incubating startups and entrepreneurs; it also becomes the nucleus of the START initiative,” she said.

Since November 2017, the WYF has held four editions of the conference under the auspices of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi with the participation of tens of thousands of young people from all over the world.

The forum aims to share ideas on priority international issues and promote dialogue with the young generations.

The fourth edition of the three-day forum was held in Sharm El-Sheikh city in January 2022 with the participation of a large number of young people from around 196 countries amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The fourth WYF came out with a number of recommendations, including the establishment of the African Enterprise Business Council, which brings together young entrepreneurs and businessmen with the aim of linking the youth’s ideas and innovations to offer opportunities and financing initiatives.

The WYF last year also called on the World Health Organization to adopt an initiative for mutual recognition of vaccines, and the localization of water desalination technology in all countries of the world that suffer from water poverty in order to produce water at a lower cost and ensure maximum benefit from it.

It also called for holding a global summit that includes all international financial institutions and donor countries to discuss the best ways and mechanisms to help poor and poorest communities

The recommendations also included the necessity of involving young people in climate change discussions and working to disseminate and define climate goals at the regional and international levels.

The WYF called for the unification of international efforts to establish a unified platform of the UN concerned with ensuring the necessary funding for the reconstruction process and coordinating multiple policies between all parties.