Heritage Conservation Think Tank

Egypt Today (Nadine el Sayed)

He who has a back can’t be hit in his stomach,” is the adage behind the new student-run Heritage Conservation Think Tank (HCTT). And if more Egyptians both remembered and honored their 7,000 years of ‘back,’ then a better and stronger future for the country would no doubt be in store.

That’s the credo of the project’s co-founders, Hassan Shehawy, 21, and Sherif Abo Al-Hadeed, 23. Disillusioned with the population’s lack of knowledge about the nation’s rich history and tired of waiting for the government to take action, they decided to take matters into their own hands, launching the think tank in an attempt to strengthen the sense of cultural identity among Egyptians.

“We have 7,000 years of history but we forget them,” Shehawy says, “and so we forgot we have a back and now we’re being hit in the stomach. If we remember our long ‘back’, our history, we will feel a responsibility towards [it] and work not only to conserve it, but to complete it and move forward.”

Neither founder has a professional or even academic interest in history: Shehawy is an engineering student at Cairo University, while Abo Al-Hadeed holds a masters in microbiology. Abo Al-Hadeed says that a person’s education or specialization shouldn’t prevent him from caring about his country’s heritage.