Mahmoud Shalaby: Bigger than disability

CAIRO – 10 November 2017: Major Mahmoud Shalaby chose not to give up when he was paralyzed by an accident in 2004. Years later, he became a role model to so many people, and therefore, President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi honored him during the closing of the World Youth Forum (WYF) on Thursday.

“I refused to give up after the accident,” Shalaby affirmed to media outlets during several interviews as the first officer with special needs.

During his participation in a conference held by South Valley University in 2015, Shalaby said to the students that “life itself could be meaningless, unless we decide to give it a purpose,” and that’s how he became his own life master.

Shalaby didn’t only decide to keep his job with the Interior Ministry, but he also won many tournaments in swimming, horse riding and diving, and he is considered to be the world's first person to swim alone for a mile and a half, after manufacturing some of the world's first supplies to help him swim, according to the official WYF Facebook page.



The WYF, which launched on Sunday under the theme “We Need to Talk”, is a forum designed to give global youth the chance to be heard by world leaders and influential individuals. The event brought 3,000 youth together from all over the world.
The idea to hold an international youth conference in Egypt came during the third National Conference of Youth (NCY) in Ismailia.

The forum included 46 sessions and workshops that discussed various key issues, including youth employment to achieve sustainable development, as well as fighting terrorism, extremism, and illegal immigration.