2nd phase of Egypt’s marriage awareness project kicks off, to train 1,800 youths

CAIRO – 18 August 2020: The second phase of the national marriage awareness project “Mawadda” kicks off in Egypt, with a total of 1,800 youths to be trained on the importance of protecting their marriage amid the spiraling divorce rates in the country.

The second phase started August 16 and will last until September 15.

The youths targeted in the second phase are from 12 different governorates, including Cairo, Giza, Qalubiya, Alexandria, Gharbiya, Beheira, Kafr el-Sheikh, Dakahlia, Ismailia, Suez, Fayoum and Minya.

All precautionary and protection measures to prevent the spread of the coronavirus are applied during the workshops.

The training encompasses various pillars: social, psychological, economic, health and religious, aiming to raise awareness of the trainees, and providing them with the necessary knowledge and skills to establish a stable family life.

A group of young cadres, who were previously trained to facilitate the scientific content of the workshop, will be responsible for leading the training of the second batch of youths.

The training comes in cooperation with the Ministry of Youth and Sports and the United Nations Population Fund.

Every day, 542 couples get divorced in Egypt—that’s a staggering 198,000 cases, reveal the latest figures from CAPMAS. The numbers are for 2017 and also indicate that some 38 percent of all divorces are comprised of newlywed couples married between 1-3 years.

In an effort to address the spiraling divorce rates, the Ministry of Social Solidarity has launched the “Mawadda” Program, with the primary aim of keeping couples together.

“The idea of the Mawadda [which roughly translates to Cordiality] program came up at the sixth Youth Forum that took place at Cairo University in July 2018, when President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi asked Minster of Social Solidarity—at that time Dr. Ghada Wali—to study the reasons behind the high divorce rates in Egypt that had become a phenomenon,” says Dr. Ayman Abdel Aziz, the general coordinator of the program.

“The minister went back to the statistics provided by the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics [CAPMAS] and found that in 2017, there were 198,000 divorce cases in Egypt, marking about 542 cases per day,” says Abdel Aziz, who has a strong academic background in the area of family disputes.

He added that the rate of divorces among the couples who had been married for 1-3 years was the highest, constituting 38 percent of the total number of divorces that year.

Cairo, Alexandria and Port Said were the governorates with the highest percentages.

"The Mawadda program teaches youth the skills needed to protect their marriage before they commit to this union. It teaches both young men and women how to deal with each other to be able to have a successful and strong relationship, teaching married couples how to be role models or their kids," Abdel Aziz explains.


“We’ve completed two rounds [of training] for university students; in each round we spoke with 20,000 youths,” Abdel Aziz recounts, explaining that the first round took place in March and April 2019 and the second round was in November and December of the same year.

Mawadda also offered sessions to 12,000 young women and men who are performing their general service after university graduation, in addition to raising the awareness of 30,000 young army conscripts, 2,500 police conscripts and 500 university students at summer camps.

Abdel Aziz clarifies that each training day includes three workshops: a religious session , a medical session and a social/psychological session, in addition to a psychodrama session presented by two of the participants who portray a married couple negatively interacting with each other, and two others (or the same) portraying a married couple showing positive interaction.

"Creating a comprehensive scientific guide covering all aspects of marriage, Mawadda’s content is offered directly to university, session and camp participants as well as indirectly to everyone through the program’s online platform and Facebook page," Abdel Aziz says.

The content is reviewed by Al-Azhar and the Supreme Council of Universities. Mawadda’s online platform was launched by President Sisi during the third edition of the World Youth Forum that took place in December 2019.

The platform offers advisory information for parents of sons or daughters who are about to wed, as well as guidance to young women and men before marriage.