By publicly championing children's educational and cultural rights, Mrs Suzanne Mubarak hopes to garner governmental and non-governmental support for her cause. Dina Ezzat reports Children's book authors and illustrators were celebrated by Mrs Suzanne Mubarak as part of an appeal for greater governmental and civil society involvement in the fulfillment of children's rights and needs. On Sunday evening at the Maadi Library, Mrs Mubarak honoured the winners of the Suzanne Mubarak Children's Literature Award. The honours were bestowed on writers and artists, as well as publishing houses that produce children books. Established in 1990, the annual awards were initially funded by Mrs Mubarak herself. Over the years, several governmental and non- governmental bodies have helped to pick up the tab. The result, Mrs Mubarak said, has been hundreds of new books that are written by Egyptian writers addressing Egyptian children. Publishers large and small have been inspired to dedicate a significant portion of their output to children's writing. On Tuesday, Mrs Mubarak told Al-Ahram that her commitment to promoting quality children's literature is part of an overall mission that she has been working on for years: underlining the cultural component in the everyday life of Egyptian children. Another part of the plan was the long-running Read To Your Child campaign, which Mrs Mubarak said would be supplemented with new, more diversified titles being made available to the public at reasonable prices. The campaign will also include a range of CDs that address different issues Egyptian children are interested in. "We are very well aware that reading is not only about books ... we are aware that children like to access information from the Internet ... we are determined to address the IT tools of reading, but we are also committed to creating and maintaining a strong link between children and books." Last week Mrs Mubarak also inaugurated a new girls school in Giza as part of a "Girls' Education Initiative" meant to garner governmental and non-governmental resources to build and operate girls schools featuring a limited number of classes with predominantly female teachers. The initiative is based on studies that have shown that girls represent the vast majority of school dropout cases nationwide. This, says the National Council for Motherhood and Childhood, is a result of prevalent social norms that catalyse gender segregation when it comes to education. The initiative primarily targets less privileged neighbourhoods where educational segregation is at its worst. At the inauguration, Mrs Mubarak said the initiative provided a realistic dynamic for government and civil society to work together to address the problems that affect the lives of a considerable segment of society.
