The initiative, launched in Gharbiya in partnership with the Ministry of Culture and represented by the National Centre for Child Culture, and the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), affiliated to the Ministry of Social Solidarity, aims to discover children’s abilities in various fields, including arts, sciences, sports, and literature, and to develop new talent through specialised training programmes and creative workshops conducted by specialists to prepare children to participate in competitions, the head of the ministry’s Central Administration for Family and Women’s Affairs Mona Al-Shabrawi said, adding that it also aims at training workers in children’s clubs and centres that combat child labour to discover and develop talents.
The initiative targets 1,000 children aged six to 16 in six governorates, a ministry press release said.
Director-General of the General Administration for Children at the Ministry of Social Solidarity Hanem Omar told Al-Ahram Weekly almost 200 children applied in Gharbiya out of which 177 were promoted. “The initiative has successfully identified a large group of talented children in various fields,” Omar said. “The initiative has also contributed to raising the awareness of families of the importance of nurturing talent and encouraging creativity between children,” Omar added.
The project organised a four-day training workshop for the I Am Talented initiative in which six researchers specialising in literature, poetry, and science from Cairo, Alexandria, North Sinai, Gharbiya, Minya, and Marsa Matrouh were recruited to train on how to apply Raven’s Progressive Matrices, a classical non-verbal test used to measure abstract reasoning and fluid intelligence.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 24 April, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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