I remember the sayings of great Egyptian writer Youssef Edris who said that the real poverty of Egypt it is the poverty of thought, and the thought of poverty. He said this in the early eighties of the last century, during a symposium at the Library of Alexandria.
Egyptian history has recorded many situations of solidarity between citizens, especially when it comes to national economic projects. For example, a project like "Penny Project" launched by an Egyptian young man named "Ahmed Hussein" in 1931, whose idea is for every citizen to donate a single penny, in order to set up an Egyptian factory to manufacture "fez" instead of importing them from abroad. At that time, fez was part of the national dress of the Egyptians, and he found it shameful that the Egyptians had to import their national dress from abroad. The idea became very popular, and the campaign collected 20 thousand pounds, which was a very large amount of money at that time and the factory was opened in 1933.
We do not need such ideas these days when 75% of our food and clothing are imported from abroad, so that we may collect donations to build factories where the poor and the unemployed work, instead of challenging each other to feed more poor people during the holy month of Ramadan. Teach a Man to Fish, Rather Than Give Fish
