The April 6 Youth Movement announced that they are adopting a project by scientist Dr. Zeinab Al-Deeb, at a press conference in Cairo.
The April 6 Youth Movement is also sometimes referred to as April 6 Ahmed Maher, not to be confused with April 6 Democratic Front. The project is called, “Resurrecting the Egyptian Village’s Production”.
The Daily News Egypt spoke with Mohamed Mahmoud, head of the Service and Community sector of the movement, who said that the main aim of the project is to “re-use our natural resources whether they are water resources, desert lands, or touristic resources.”
He added that the April 6 Youth Movement’s role in the project would be to lobby the government to adopt the project and create awareness with particular attention to farmers in order to help them use their resources more effectively.
Mahmoud explained that through the project farmers will be able to double their produce. According to him Al-Deeb has already acquired 2 million fedans of land from the government for the project. He went on to add, “We will involve unemployed unproductive youth in the project and take them from being this way to being productive. Why would anyone refuse that?”
He believes that through the project the youth movement will be able to drastically bring down unemployment levels. Mahmoud explained that Al-Deeb’s offices were seized by the Mubarak government in the 1990s. It was not uncommon for the old regime to stand in the way of business, and in many cases the old regime wanted a cut. She obtained a court order to reclaim her offices but it was not enough. She only managed to resolve her case recently.
This is not the only project April 6 is currently working on. Co-founder of the movement and member of the political bureau, Amal Sharaf said that the members of the movement regularly talk to people and try to offer them needed services and solve their problems. “Sometimes we talk to governors and tell them what the people need”, she added.
They also have a political project called “Write Your Constitution”, she said. “We try to get people to participate in writing the constitution. We are creating awareness about it and how important it is and we try to get their views to the constituent assembly through Ahmed Maher who is a co-founder of April 6 and a member of the assembly responsible for drafting the constitution.”
Sharaf says that the level of political awareness in Egypt is much better than it used to be. “The people are much more responsive. They weren’t like that in the past”.