I didn't set out to like Suzanne Mubarak. Politically speaking, it would have been easier had I simply found her a pleasant do-gooder content with her role as First Lady. Although I enjoy politics, I’m also a foreigner, so for nearly seven years I’ve opted to indulge my inner technocrat and sidestep the First Family altogether. An unabashed fan of Gamal Mubarak’s reform agenda, I nonetheless stay away from the daily doings of the president, Mrs. Mubarak and their intimates. Much more accessible and easier to tackle are the machinations of the political machine that implements their vision, from Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif on down.

So heading into August, what impression I had of the First Lady was that she was a decent woman with an immense interest in women’s and children’s issues. A bit cool in front of the cameras, perhaps, but the woman Princess Diana might have resembled in her autumnal years had God granted her the chance.

Forgive me, then, for being a bit reticent when a mutual acquaintance suggested it might be interesting to profile Mrs. Mubarak for this month’s issue. It seemed like something of a no-win situation. Had I liked the woman and said so openly, it would be too easy to dismiss as toadying to the establishment. And criticism? Just the gripes of a foreigner who doesn’t really understand the nation’s political landscape.

But the long and the short of it is that I found myself liking Suzanne Mubarak.

Mrs. Mubarak’s politics are not the politics of elections, presidential succession or regional peace conferences. Instead, they are politics at a much more basic —and, in many ways, far more important — level, for hers are the politics that will shape the course of Egypt and the wider Middle East for generations to come. They are the politics of the so-called Arab Street. Or the Egyptian one, at least.

Neglect that and the moment the oil and gas run out, we’ll become an economic, social and political backwater —the ultimate also-ran in the race for global economic prosperity. Listen to what she has to say and we might just take steps toward the creation not only of a more just society, but of the bedrock on which a globally competitive economy is based.

Mrs. Mubarak at the World Economic Forum in Sharm El-Sheikh.

“I believe I can help, that I can make a difference. I feel I simply have this responsibility to use my position, my capacity, my interests — and the knowledge I’ve acquired over so many years in all of these sectors —to make a positive contribution.”

She would never be so uncouth as to put it this way, but Mrs. Mubarak knows full well that Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign maxim has never been more on-point than it is here, today, in Egypt: It’s the economy, stupid. Born to privilege — she is an AUC-trained sociologist, the daughter of a prominent physician and his Welsh wife — Mrs. Mubarak nonetheless knows there are no words that can adequately capture the terror of not knowing whether you’ll be able to keep your family’s head above water another day.

The talking class of journalists, policy wonks, self-appointed analysts, bloggers, Ikhwanites and activists hold forth on freedom of the press, the ‘inheritance’ of power, why the governing National Democratic Party won’t help opposition parties grow, and whether religion has a place on your national ID. They’re important issues, but the man on the street is more worried about his daily bread. Full-stop. Ask a cabbie. Ask your bawab. Ask the beggar on the street or the guy who fixes your car. Such niceties as the real percentage that turned out to vote, or whether Gamal Mubarak is being groomed to succeed his father, or the state of the secular opposition are utterly irrelevant to their daily lives.

Food. Shelter. Education. Those are the concerns of the average Egyptian. And by average Egyptian I mean those 75 million citizens out of a population of perhaps 79.5 million who cannot afford the imported or foreign brands on display at CityStars. Mom may not be able to articulate how inflation works, but she knows how it squeezes her pocketbook and wonders how she can afford school fees —let alone school supplies or the now-obligatory private tutor — after putting food on the table. Dad is working a second job to pay off the medical bill they ran up treating their daughter’s latest asthma attack at a private hospital because he had no faith in the local government-run clinic. And the son? He sits at the neighborhood ahwa, huffing shisha and growing ever more restive as he despairs of ever finding a job and starting a family of his own, his education having left him without the skills the market demands.

Listen to what the nation’s economic supremos have to say and you’ll hear plenty of talk about knowledge-based businesses and medium-weight, medium-technology industry being the ways forward. They’re right, no question about it. But those industries — from manufacturing to call centers, automotive repair to IT services — demand skilled problem-solvers who have confidence that they bring something to the workplace.

The government is on track: It is building the framework of tomorrow’s economy. But that economy must rest atop a bedrock that is society, and Suzanne Mubarak — a woman who lives and breathes Tip O’Neil’s maxim that “all politics is local” — is playing an important role in shaping its face.

A one-on-one session with then-UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, whose body recognized her with its highest award for her work with children.

And so it was late last month that, running on three hours of sleep just days after my first child was born, I found myself parked under the noontime sun at the gate of the Mubarak family’s waterfront summer residence in Alexandria’s Montazah district. At last ushered through — presidential security runs exactly on time; I, however, was incredibly early —we wound our way down a narrow driveway flanked by bodyguards and the best of the blue-bereted Republican Guard before being waved to a stop in front of the residence.

More security procedures, as polite as they were thorough, and I was escorted along the short path to the front door. Up a step or two and we were in. I figured I would be meant to wait, an assumption reinforced by the line of people I didn’t recognize standing just inside the door. Okay, another moment to skim through my questions. Not a chance. Propelled by my escort from the Chamberlain’s Office around a demi-wall, I found myself in a cozy, European-style living room, standing face-to-face with an elegant, casually dressed woman.

“Hello, I’m Suzanne Mubarak,” she says into the hushed silence of the empty room as I think she is far more striking in person than on television. “I’ll sit here. You sit wherever you like,” she adds, but gestures to the chair nearest her. Throughout our talk, Mrs. Mubarak proved warm, witty and engaging — leaning in and smiling to soften the blow even as she bashed my chosen profession.

It was to be a private talk, attended only by her chief of staff, and absolutely no more than an hour long. I tried to cut conversation off at just under an hour.

“I’m fine if you’re fine. Do you have something else? If you do, okay. Really. But I’m fine if you have time,” Mrs. Mubarak would say.

Women’s literacy remains one of the causes closest to Mrs. Mubarak’s heart.

At the hour-and-a-half mark, it was time to go. As I ambled out for the drive back to Cairo, Mrs. Mubarak flipped through a large stack of briefing papers, then rose to welcome a small group of people heading in for their appointment.

So much for her seaside vacation. That brief respite on the coast would end maybe 36 hours after our interview as she would head back to Cairo for a schedule packed with meetings before jetting off to Sharm El-Sheikh for her Women’s International Peace Movement’s first-ever International Youth Forum.

The Forum, she would tell me, wouldn’t be just another “two-day talk show.” Flipping later through the list of confirmed speakers, I found she would be introducing more than 700 young leaders to something unique. Sure, the usual suspects would be addressing the delegates — serial NGO-founder Ehab Abdou, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina’s Ismail Serageldin and Al-Alam Al-Youm’s Lamis Al-Hadidi, among dozens of others — but so too would be some of the outside world’s best and brightest. Economist and bestselling author Jeffrey Sachs, Al-Jazeera’s Riz Khan, the World Bank’s Daniela Gressani, CNN’s Hala Gorani, Microsoft International President Jean-Philippe Courtois. Heck, even football superstar Zinédine Zidaine would make an appearance.

After our interview, I know why an A-list usually reserved for the World Economic Forum would turn up in Sharm in early September, and it has a bit to do with this woman’s personal charm — and everything to do with her global vision. Edited excerpts:

It’s really —how can I put it? —empowering people by investing in education, investing in health services, investing in improving the quality of life and standard of living. To build upon the human capital we have, we must make significant new investments in education, in health services.

It’s a tremendous challenge, but we have finally embraced the idea that no government can do it alone. We have done it for too long in Egypt, and it has taken too many years to break out of this welfare state approach; in fact, we’re still breaking away from that approach. As you can see, even when people realize that it cannot be the government that provides everything, there is still tremendous resistance to change. They all want to go back to some ideal.

The way to deal with that is to teach everyone that he is a stakeholder. It is the responsibility of every citizen to be engaged in their nation, and this includes the private sector. Everybody has a responsibility to help lay the foundation upon which our development strategy will be executed.

That’s why we’re now talking about public-private partnerships in every sector, from education to finance. There is no other way to do it — no other way.

Critics say that some people are paying a price along the way. Well, someone must pay a price in every change that comes —for a while, at least. Temporarily. Things settle down over a period of years, then the boom begins.

Girls’ education remains far-and-away Mrs. Mubarak’s favorite personal issue.

In fact, we’re already seeing positive change. We see more private-sector involvement, more private-sector growth, and there’s a social benefit to that. It seems every company today has a corporate social responsibility program. Corporations have a social agenda, this one’s building or sponsoring a school, that one a hospital or a clinic.

The media doesn’t help. The media isn’t showing that business can be good. I’m always on the side of the private sector. You know, 90 percent of my work is funded by the local private sector. I ask for practically no help at all from international organizations. Local, Egyptian efforts — from the grassroots up. Capacity-building using domestic resources is everything, from the simplest gameyya to banks, financial institutions and business leaders. We have to give them credit for that.

It’s the media. It’s the media. Every summer, you open the newspapers and what do you find? You find stories with this kind of incredible bitterness against people who have homes in Marina, in Maraqia, against people who have a yacht, people who have a boat, who have a car.

I mean, what’s wrong if they’ve made it and they’ve gotten rich and they can afford things? As long —as long — as they have accepted the responsibility of giving to the less fortunate, which the majority do, what’s wrong?

More than 700 young leaders from around the world will descend on Sharm El-Sheikh this month for Mrs. Mubarak’s Youth Forum.

There are rich, poor and middle class in every country. The challenge for us is to create some harmony —to redistribute a bit so everyone can have a piece of the pie — while giving the disadvantaged the skills they need to improve their standard of living. What’s so new about that?

So why is it that every summer there is this massive outcry: So-and-so has built a villa! This one has a yacht! Why is it? It’s the media!

I was flying over the North Coast recently, coming from Marsa Matrouh to here. It was at night, and the sight of the coastline? Amazing. Ten years ago, it was this narrow strip. I was so proud to see it the other night: All along the coast, these beautiful summer vacation homes, whole cities of them.

Think about it: Where would they go if these cities were not here? Abroad. They can afford it, but they prefer to stay at home — they prefer to stay on the coast or in Alexandria with their families and their friends, in their own country. Think of the jobs they create: the construction, the builders, the restaurants, hotels.

What’s wrong with that? Why doesn’t the media look at it that way? Instead, every summer for the past I don’t know how long, they go on and on and on with the same thing. They’re sowing anger and mistrust, things that were never there in our society. You think Egypt never had rich people before? Through all time, there have been the rich and the poor.

Tabaan, absolutely, I agree — and it’s a wonderful thing that people want to empower themselves and improve their lives. The aspirations of the masses have certainly gotten higher, and I think perhaps because there’s more media, there’s more freedom of the press — satellite television, the internet — we see now what we didn’t see before. That’s certainly a factor: The rich see more of the poor, and the poor see more of the rich.

It makes me think of years ago, when we established the Future Generation Foundation. It was Ramadan and I was at home watching television. I saw all these advertisements for the new cities that were just then starting to be built. I saw golf courses, villas, swimming pools. I was watching and felt, “Something’s wrong here. How would a poor person feel watching this?”

So I had a small meeting —the minister of information, the minister of housing at that time, the minister of health —and I said, “Look, we have to do something. It’s not just advertising for this kind of homes. We have to do something for the poor.”

So we established the Future Foundation with the idea of implementing programs. If you go back, this is when we started talking about youth employment, youth housing, housing for limited-income earners. And to this day, we don’t hear in the media about even one low-income housing development we have built, how many housing units we have distributed. How many youth houses —how many of the thousands across the country, hundreds in every governorate? We don’t hear a thing.

What do we hear? Somebody built a palace. It’s the media that has been so negative —and that continues to be so, unfortunately.

I don’t know, I really don’t. I have no answer for that. It’s a shame, we need to be a little more positive. Be fair. I’m not saying make propaganda, but at least look at it from a more balanced point of view. There are so many positive things taking place in Egypt, and I mean on a daily basis, whether it’s infrastructure, whether it’s investment, whether it’s electricity, you name it. Nobody’s interested in talking about this. Haram. At least give the people who are working and producing all these services some credit.

The media loves to attack the government and the cabinet. As far as the media is concerned, no Egyptian government has ever come that has done any good. Governments have only destroyed. Haram. Walahee haram, mish kedda. These people work 24 hours a day. They don’t even get a day holiday. And if they come to Alexandria for the day? The headlines declare “The Government Went on Vacation!” Haram alayhom. Even if they go to Alexandria to relax, so what? They’re still working around the clock.

I really feel sorry for these people. Really. I’m an insider, I see how they work, and they make huge sacrifices of their time, then they get no credit?

Who benefits from these stories? It’s not for Egypt’s benefit. And then they attack foreign investment. Without foreign investment, Egyptian investment, Arab investment, how are we going to proceed?

I’m carrying a social agenda — the social agenda of Egypt, if you will. I’m carrying it in the sense that any social agenda —whether you’re talking about education, about health, about development — you name it —demands political decisions. You need political will, political decisions and political support to implement any social program.

That’s where I come in. I have played a role in assisting, in making certain this social agenda is on the political map. As you can imagine, this covers a broad array of issues and sectors: women, children, youth, housing, education, health. I have a small part in all of these social issues. No, not huge. I’m assisting, I’m helping, I’m working with our partners, whether they’re non-governmental organizations, the private sector or the public sector, which still shoulders the heaviest burden in providing services.

No, no, I don’t think so. I started much earlier than that. What was perhaps significant about the earthquake was how it made me look at the concept of community development. We had this huge problem after the earthquake: What to do with all of these thousands of families — how to find suitable homes for them, how to help them rebuild their lives. This is when I came to realize how immense the problem was and how immense the effort would have to be to tackle the issue of community development.

I love what I do because I believe in what I’m doing and I believe I can help, that I can make a difference. I feel I simply have this responsibility to use my position, my capacity, my interests — and the knowledge I’ve acquired over so many years in all of these sectors —to make a positive contribution.

I’m proud of what I’m doing, and I feel I owe it to my country because Masr di omm el-donia, faalan [referring to the common proverb ‘Egypt is the mother of the world’] —seriously, regardless of everything, it is such an amazing country full of amazing people.

You know, I’m always bubbling with ideas. They just come to me. In this case, I was looking for a way to capitalize on the experience I have gained at the national, regional and international level. I’m a person who educates herself. Every day. If a day goes by in which I feel I haven’t learned something, I feel incomplete, I feel at a loss. I like to keep up on the latest that’s taking place in my field of interest.

So looking at the wars and conflicts that have taken place in the last 20 years — not just in the world, but in our area —seeing the images of women escaping conflict zones, seeing women and children in refugee camps, seeing women who have been humiliated, who have been raped. In a sense, feeling all the suffering, it was clear: Nobody suffers in war more than women and children.

Despite this, what do we find? When peace comes, it is women who pick up the burden. It is women who rebuild their families and their communities from nothing, from scratch. Women have been seen for so long as just the victims of war, but they’re not: They’re the makers and builders and defenders of society.

I read, travel, attend conferences. On the international level, women have gotten together from the grassroots level all the way up to the United Nations. They’ve gotten together to call for the banning of mines, calling for the categorization of rape as a war crime. It’s women who have been able to join forces and make their voices heard. Jody Williams, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for her international campaign to ban landmines, pointed out that these things destroy the women and the children who are scratching the ground to rebuild society and prevent new war.

I thought, why not join this force? We’re not reinventing the wheel and we’re not creating something new. But we could have a movement that comes from the Arab world — and from Egypt in particular — to show we have chosen peace. And we’ve stuck with that course of peace despite so much pressure from so many different sides.

Alhamdulilah, we’ve proven very successful in such a very short period of time. We have an agenda that has contributed to the fight against violence against children. The battle against human trafficking has taken on a life of its own, and other countries are interested in what we’re doing.

Thankfully, trafficking in women and children was never part of my agenda because it’s never been a huge domestic issue for us, but it is shocking. I was shocked at the numbers — billions of dollars. It’s become a trade, it’s modern slavery in which women are being sold and resold and resold like a commodity. I’m an avid reader, so I dove into the literature and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. So now we’re a part of this global fight, we’re helping draw additional attention to it.

We haven’t pioneered this, but since we’ve taken it on, it has gained in regional profile. And we have certainly brought the business community into the issue. They’ve become partners in the fight against human trafficking through the Athens Declaration.

I’m so proud of that. What’s really interesting, though, is that in choosing our more than 700 young delegates, we’ve learned so much from today’s Egyptian youth. We’ve discovered hundreds, maybe thousands of small youth groups across Egypt. Youth who have formed their own groups and societies around the nation to focus on issues that matter to them.

And you know it’s all related to peace: Peace doesn’t just involve matters of war and peace. No, peace is local development, too. These kids — some of them as young as 14 —are leading their own groups to build local schools or help at local clinics, to say no to violence. Haga gameela — youth are wonderful.

The Movement wants everyone to adopt a more expansive definition of peace. We want youth to live in peace in their homes, in their communities, in their society all the way up to the region and the world. Justice, human security and development — it’s all about peace. Economic reform, assistance programs and youth job creation — it’s all about peace.

The challenge, then, is to teach peace —to teach youth how to work out their problems without resorting to violence or conflict.

It’s difficult, you know: We’re not living in peaceful times, nor are we living in a peaceful area. This is a tremendous challenge when people are fighting, killing, blowing themselves and others up all around us across the border while we’re talking about peace and a culture of peace.

We need to examine the root cause of violence.

It’s different these days. There’s instability all around us, nationally and especially regionally. A feeling of injustice certainly plays a role, because people feel they want jobs and lives and they have unemployment and desperation. They have inequities they see every day. They feel marginalized. They’re not looked upon as stakeholders.

And they are stakeholders. Youth as young as 18 are full participants in our political system. But this is the irony: You get many rights when you turn 18. The right to vote, the right to drive a car. But just as you need skills to drive a car, you need skills to participate in a democracy.

It’s wonderful that people have the right to vote, but we have to create a system that allows them to develop the skills to see why they’re voting, who they’re voting for and why they prefer that candidate’s positions.

On this issue, we here in Egypt still have lots of hard work to do.

Education. We have to start early in the schools. We have to make people realize that they’re not just beneficiaries of services, they’re partners in their communities. You have a problem with the water in your community? Fine. Don’t just scream, ‘We have no water!’ No, be a leader. Get your friends and neighbors together and form a delegation to go to the authorities to present your problem and ask whether there’s anything you can do to help make it better.

We cannot sit back and wait for the government to deliver services. We can’t — that system doesn’t work. But for youth to become partners, they have to be educated, and we’re now doing that through the National Youth Council, through the education system, through summer youth camps. The teaching of civic rights and responsibilities, public morals, your role in society are all things that have become part of the school system.

Youth need to be shown the path to participation. To talk about democracy and the democratic process, you have to start preparing people very early. They need to understand what a democratic process is, sure, but kids also need to be taught first off how to discuss a controversial issue without fighting. People need to see that in a discussion, the other person has the right to reply.

Once again, the media isn’t helping here: Go look at any so-called talk show, where people are supposed to be having a dialogue, but they wind up almost hitting each other.

Values are acquired, they’re taught —you don’t just absorb them. To build a better society, a better democracy, you have to be taught first to accept each other, to help each other. It’s giving, sharing, participating, it’s being part of the process.

I will certainly attend the ICT for Peace session for two reasons. First of all, I need to be educated about what ICT can do. My generation did not grow up with computers, with the net. These young people have the tools, and they’re already involved, they have their own programs, their own websites and online communities —things I know nothing about and wouldn’t know how to do if I wanted to.

Yaani, yes, I’m online. But you know, I still love my pen and paper. So I’d like to learn from these people. It’s mind-boggling to me. Young people today learn in a very different manner, they socialize in a different manner on the net. Learning is not just in the school or in the family, as it was when I was young. Absolutely not. Now, at the click of a mouse, a whole world of information opens up to them.

As parents and grandparents, as a society, our control over our youth is no longer what it was. They have the tools and the ability to make decisions and do things that we don’t even know about. The decisions they make today are extremely important — they can shape their entire futures.

Nationwide, people need to realize that we’re not equipping youth for the future. No way! The future is now —tomorrow is today because the world is moving forward at an ever-faster pace. So much of that is being played out on the net, where you can make very positive choices or very negative ones. That’s what interests me.

You see, I’m all for safety, for a safe experience on the internet. I worry about my own grandchildren. They go online, and I worry about what that little mouse in their room can lead them to. Did you know there are more than 100,000 child pornography sites on the internet? One-hundred-thousand sites on child pornography. Child pornography! A wrong click and you’re there. Visited 18,000 times a day by adults.

Do you know the age from which they start these pornographic pictures? From six to eight months. The organizers of the panel have the pictures! They told us, “Okay, if you want, we have the evidence. We’ll present it at the forum.” No way. I believe them. We don’t need to show that kind of filth.

So obviously, we want to protect our children. We don’t want them exposed to this and we don’t want them victimized by this. But it brings up tricky issues. Try to close down sites like this and you raise a dilemma: People start declaring that you’re against freedom, that you’re restricting free speech. But I’ll tell you this: As much as freedom of expression is growing in Egypt, I’m going to fight child pornography, I’m going to fight for a safe internet.

Now, the West is starting to realize this. In America and Sweden, they’re catching on and they’re going after the people who use these websites.

I believe youth can get behind this and find a way to make certain that this massive information and participation tool that is the internet can be protected, that the young who use it can be protected. Youth have a responsibility to help protect children — those young kids of six or seven.

So I would like to learn more about the net and peace — how it builds peace and how it can be made safe itself. I want to explore that with these 700 young people I call my Peace Ambassadors.

There are too many to choose from, but I think my second pick would be civic responsibility and political participation. I’d definitely attend that one. I always tell people that political participation isn’t just about high politics, it’s not just about ministers and the People’s Assembly. Far from it: Every decision you make is political, down to the personal level.

The earlier we start teaching that, the better off our country will be. It all comes back to education: in schools, online, etc. It all boils down to the type of information we’re giving children.

Girls’ education. We work very hard on that, and alhamdulilah we’ve come a very long way in that field. There was a huge gap 10-15 years ago. It’s still there, but it’s closing thanks to girl-friendly schools and by giving second chances to girls who have either never been to school or who have had to drop out.

It’s a shame: It’s not that the schools aren’t there. The excuse given — and it’s sometimes true —is that the schools are sometimes too far from the village for the girls to walk. Or that primary schools aren’t very inviting. We’re filling in those gaps and we’ve built over a hundred new schools to address this issue.

But my new strategy is to move beyond bricks and mortar. Starting this year: No more building schools. I was just talking to [Secretary-General of National Council for Childhood and Motherhood] Moushira Khattab about this, and where there is a need, we will fill it —even if it’s just a matter of setting up a tent in a garden. We’ll do it. You don’t have to have a costly building. There are places without sewage, there are places that need electricity, and that must come first. But I’ve seen this done in India, I’ve seen this done in Bangladesh: The school is a tent. You put up a tent and bring in a blackboard and you have a school. School is a state of mind, not just a place. If that’s how you teach girls to read and write, that’s how we’ll do it.

I have to delegate. My God! If you count — and I won’t count — but if you count how many things I’m involved in, there’s no way I would get anything done if I didn’t delegate. But I am fully, fully involved and aware. Each one of the associations, societies, boards or institutions is the result of a vision I set and a strategy I helped formulate. I continue to monitor every day. I have the patience to follow up, I guess.

It’s very, very difficult. It’s a tremendous challenge and an enormous responsibility. I can never say, ‘Okay, that’s enough.’ I can’t do that and I won’t do that.

To the contrary: I feel I need to do more. New issues develop, new challenges crop up, the population keeps growing. It’s all about running —it’s running to cope with the needs and requirements of the nation.

Well, every year I sit down and say, ‘What’s my priority for this coming year?’ And you know, I’ve never really been very successful. Things come up, many of them out of your hands, and the reality is that you can no longer focus on any one concept or issue. I’ve always held the belief —and I think the whole world has now come to it — that it is an integrated, interdisciplinary approach that yields results. One must tackle it from that point of view. I can’t talk about education alone, about health care alone. It’s so interlinked: The child must be healthy to attend school, to take but one small aspect.

But as I say, it has become a national social agenda that encompasses all of these sectors, and what I do is try and give as much of my time as I can —equally — to each and every sector.

Sabr Ayyoub [she jokes, using the Arabic for the Patience of Job] Look, I feel these are part of me, they’re my babies, and I see them grow and develop —and I grow with them. My vision expands and I grow personally as I move along with these projects.

One of the keys is that I believe in institution-building. So far, I’ve been successful in that respect going back to the eighties with the establishment of the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood (NCCM). The NCCM was my first big initiative, you know. Before there was the [1990] World Summit for Children, we had already declared the Decade of the Egyptian Child. We have been far, far ahead of the trend in that respect. UNICEF itself recognized what Egypt has done to advance the issue, to help initiate the World Summit. We were also an initiator of the International Convention on the Rights of the Child. We have been world leaders on immunization programs that have virtually eradicated childhood diseases, the success we’ve had with eradicating polio and tetanus.

[Editor’s Note: Indeed, UNICEF’s executive board recognized not just Egypt, but Mrs. Mubarak personally, awarding her in 1989 the Maurice Pate Leadership for Children Award, its highest honor, in recognition of her work on child protection.]

There are no longer taboos in our children’s agenda: We’re working with street children, we’re working on child labor. Insha’Allah we’ll begin to have some very concrete results on female genital mutilation (FGM) soon, even though it’s a very, very difficult and complicated issue.

We execute this, the nation’s children’s agenda and social agenda, on very solid grounds built upon institutions, and those are the institutions with which I must be engaged. It took us years, it wasn’t an easy process to build these institutions, but it’s done, alhamdulilah, and we’re working from a position of strength.

I think this domestic base is why Egypt is so prominent on the international scene on any issue that has to do with child protection or child development. Egypt is number one in the field, really.

I’m similarly proud of the National Council for Women (NCW). I’m terribly proud of the work they’re doing on political, economic and social issues that touch upon women’s rights. I’m sure you’ve been following the success the NCW has had with micro-business and micro-credit. You know, micro-credit was never discussed on the national agenda until the NCW took it up.

Looking back, I can’t visualize who would have been responsible for thrusting issues of child protection, of women’s rights, of micro-credit on the national stage were it not for the NCW and the NCCM. What ministry would have done it? Not one. No way — these issues cut across too many fields. It’s health, education, finance, society, rights, laws, everything. No way, it couldn’t have been a ministry. We had to have these two organizations. One is my right arm, the other my left.

Thankfully, we’ve not really had any huge problems. We’ve been moving slowly but very steadily forward. We’ve been ambitious, but we haven’t over-reached, so we’ve made good progress.

The biggest challenge is the external environment. Our message is peace, but there’s no peace in the region. Look at last summer: We decided we would ask for a day at each of the Youth Camps that take place around the nation; in Alexandria, Port Said, Abu Qir, you name it. We agreed with the Ministry of Youth, which runs the camps, that we would have a day at each devoted to a program on the culture of peace. We organized this beautiful, full day, Davos-style program with sessions on peace and tools for success and how to manage intercultural dialogue.

So it’s great, right? Well, the morning before our first camp, it was supposed to be in Abu Qir, the biggest camp, with all these young activists drawn from every governorate in the nation, the war in Lebanon broke out.

I went to the president and asked him, “What do I do? Do we go forward? Do we cancel? We’re ready to start. We’re supposed to talk about the importance of peace and dialogue and tolerance and accepting others, and there are bombs falling.” And he said, “No. No. You go ahead. Whatever happens, we still have to talk about peace. At the end of the road, at the end of all of these years of fighting, peace has to be the only answer. So go.”

So I rang them up and said, “Go!” It was tough. We were faced with really, really tough questions. ‘How can we talk about peace in a time of war? What will Egypt do? How can we let the Israelis bomb people? Shoot people? Where’s the Egyptian Army?’

In a way, it was an opportunity. We had great speakers and moderators across the country, so we worked really hard to explain that peace is not weakness, that there must be dialogue — that dialogue is the only way to build lasting peace. They were so receptive, and our follow-up has found that these youth have gone back home with the peace manual we trained them on and they’re using the tools we taught in their own communities, in their own small groups.

It’s amazing. We as a nation underestimate our youth. The more you sit with them, the more you hear them talk they’re not as bad as we think! [Laughs] You see all these stories about how horrible today’s youth are, about how society has degenerated, about how irresponsible they are. “Look at how they dress! What’s that they’re listening to?” We’re always down on youth, but it’s wrong.

The more I sit with them, the more I love our youth. I come out of our meetings feeling recharged, thinking, “Alhamdulilah Egypt is in great hands if they’re the future.”

It’s uplifting how much they love Egypt, these people. Get them started and they’ll change everything.

I’ll tell them to have confidence in themselves, and to just start. To start now, even at the local level. Five or six young people in their schools, in their building, in their district, can make all the difference. Try to be a part of the change you want to see happen. Be part of that change; don’t wait for it to come from above, because change must be initiated at all levels.

I consider myself a field researcher. I’m still a sociologist at heart. I don’t just blindly rely on a report, I’m in the field, I’m in schools, I’m in hospitals, I’m with teachers and doctors and students and patients on a daily basis. We discuss, we talk. I learn from them that we have resources such as the Red Crescent that isn’t just about disaster relief, but that is now playing a very constructive role in local development. We’re building communities, we’re helping build houses and we’re providing healthcare.

I’m very, very aware of people’s basic needs. I’m aware of the housing problems. I’m aware of the problems with the state of hospitals and clinics, with worries about the affordability or safety of medicines and local issues with water. I know about the state of the schools, the difficulties of being a teacher. Why do you think we’re doing the 100 Schools project? To point out a better way, because I was aware, from my regular visits to El-Nahda, to Ain Shams, to Salam, to El-Marg, of the needs of the underprivileged.

I see the state of services in underprivileged areas and from seeing, I helped launch an initiative to upgrade all of the schools in [El-Nahda, Ain Shams, Salam and El-Marg] to train the teachers through a teacher-training center that runs from 8am until 9pm. We have 100 schools in just two years: total renovation, total training.

You should hear what the students say. I visited last year, and asked, “What do you think of your school now?” And this one boy, 12 years old, said, “I don’t recognize it. I feel I really have to work hard!”

How can I not be in touch? And all of this, of course, I convey to the President, who is also aware of everything that goes on through government and through the party. We talk about all these issues: I went here, I visited this school, I saw something or they need this. And he’ll sometimes pick up the phone and ask the minister, “what’s the news about this project?” or “why don’t you look into what’s happening here.”

We get things done. We’re definitely in touch — we’re hands on.

Now, there’s one thing you haven’t asked, which is my pride and joy: The Bibliotheca.

This is what I mean about institution building, and I consider it a social initiative. The political will was there, the political support, the political vision, and we are the implementers, the field workers of this social agenda.

The Bibliotheca epitomizes everything that I stand for personally. It is quality education, it is interpersonal dialogue, it is the latest in information technology, affordability, freedom of thought, access to information, a complete catalogue of books. It is a center of excellence and has become an international institution.

Everywhere I go in the world, I’m asked this question: “What’s new at the Alexandria Library?”

It is a tremendous success, and the message of that library is my legacy, inshaa’Allah. All the other work is unimportant.

Here, we were able to revive not just a building, but the spirit, concept and message. This message is everything that I stand for, it is everything that colors all the rest of my work. It is about quality of life, it is about freedom of speech and expression. Scholars from around the world are coming back to the library to talk politics, sociology, science, math, astronomy, education, human rights, you name it.

What more? What more can I ask for? There’s nothing better than that.

Establishing the Peace Studies Institute was very important to me. As I started to study the peace-based approach, I came to realize that it was a different perspective on social development. It’s social development from a new angle. “Where is there peace studies in Egypt?” I asked. And I found we don’t have such a thing here. Not in schools, not at the university level, not in the higher research institutions.

So I said, “Okay, let’s start a peace institute.” We started looking into it —researching the field and asking ourselves, “What is peace studies? What does it take to have a peace institute? What objectives, who’s on the team, who’s who in the field?”

Last week, 35 young people —mostly Egyptians, but including a Sudanese from Darfur and a Libyan — from a broad range of backgrounds got together for the first course. They said it was the first time they had heard of the concept of peace studies here! The third course, one on the culture of peace, is just getting started, and already the response has been such that there is demand for a master’s.

We’re trying now to get an affiliation with the UN Peace University in Costa Rica, in the name of the movement, to give a master’s in peace studies here. The ball is rolling so fast!

Academic journals, reports, things like that. I devour them. I don’t read newspapers anymore — that’s over with. I hear enough of what they write, so I follow solid academic research, what’s happening internationally in academics, in the international community. I love to have reports, to keep in touch.

I’ve stopped watching television almost completely. I can’t find anything to watch. No, no, not even a mosalsal in Ramadan. No, it’s reading, serious reading. Now and then, though, I manage to get myself into a novel. My latest one — for a reason that will be obvious —is The Alexandria Link by Steve Berry. It’s about Alexandria and about the Library! That’s why I’m reading it. It’s very interesting: He’s searching for manuscripts from the ancient Library of Alexandria for political reasons you’ll find when you read the book. But apart from that, my reading is all related to my work.

I need to challenge myself on a daily basis, that’s why I tell young people, it’s all about lifelong learning. And we’re so lucky now. With the internet, we have access to things we would never have had access to a generation ago, we can share knowledge as never before.

When I have appointments, if I have courtesy calls or someone coming from abroad, my first meeting starts at 10:30am and I’ll take the whole morning for appointments, with one every half-hour or so until perhaps 2:30pm. If I’m going to visit some of my projects, or schools or libraries or community development projects, then I’ll do that in the mornings, too.

But if I have meetings of steering committees or the Movement or national councils or advisory boards, these I’ll usually do in the afternoon so that our partners don’t have to leave their jobs or their offices to come attend. We’ll start at around 6pm and finish up at around 10pm. We’ll do one or two meetings back-to-back.

The weekends. Family time, too, is on the weekends. We have grandchildren, and 90 percent of my free time is spent with them. Even during work hours, I take time for the grandchildren! Lamia [her chief of staff] can tell you: Sometimes I’ll be in a meeting, but I’ll excuse myself and go upstairs for five minutes if the boys are with the babysitter and are being put to bed. I’ll sit with them at bedtime, then come back downstairs to resume.

I’m a very active grandmother: I feed, I bathe, I babysit, I read. I do everything a mother does. I give them a lot of time —I always have time for my family, for my two boys.

You know, people say, “Oh, you have sons. How old are they?” They think I’ll tell them so they can do the math and guess my age. I tell them, “Oh, they’re young men.” Kifaya! You think you can pull that one on me?

Not much. There’s no such thing as privacy for me, really. Maybe just coming up here for a weekend with the family, maybe part of a weekend in Cairo. As a private citizen? Not much time, really. I don’t go out to functions, I don’t do ladies’ luncheons or dinners. I don’t go out at night, and I’ve even stopped going to weddings in the past few years — it’s too late at night for me to be going out at 11 o’clock. That’s my bedtime. How can I be fresh if I’m coming home at two o’clock?

I’ve put myself on a kind of regime. Socializing or having a private life? It’s sad in a way, because you need to unwind, but it has turned out this way. Of course the President doesn’t go out, either, not to parties or to weddings. We chose that path a very, very long time ago, so it’s become a habit.

Yes, on the weekends. On evenings, when we don’t have meetings and he’s home, then we sit and we talk together. We’re a small, close-knit family —a happy family, alhamdulilah, and that’s the most important thing. You’ll find that soon, when your little girl grows up, you’ll find your whole life changes 180 degrees. From now on, everything you’re going to do will center around her. Shall we go out, or is it better for the baby to stay home? Vacation: Is the beach better? Or would she rather go to a city? What’s better for her? Your whole life will revolve around the needs and demands of that child. It’s a wonderful thing.

I could choose many, from the Cairo Population Conference to Beijing, but the World Summit on the Child in 1990 meant everything to me.

Egypt was one of the six initiators [along with Canada, Sweden, Mexico, Pakistan and Mali], and President Mubarak was going to give a speech along with all the other heads-of-state. But because of the war that broke out in Iraq he, of course, was not able to attend and asked me to attend in his place.

There was such turmoil and debate when we arrived at the United Nations in New York. Then the day came: It was all heads-of-state, and every head-of-state could give a 5-6 minute statement. When Egypt’s turn came, I was the only non-head-of-state that was given permission to take the head of state’s slot. It doesn’t happen. But I had the opportunity. I went up on stage and I had a tremendous standing ovation. I read such a short statement, but I remember afterward that Barbara Bush, the First Lady at the time, told me when I came down, “Suzanne, you represented us all and you did it beautifully.”

I was so proud of that moment. It was great acknowledgement not for me, but for everything that Egypt has done on the issue of child protection going back to the very early 1980s.

With youth. Youth have tremendous resources such as the internet to call upon, but they also face incredible challenges that sometimes seem to get bigger by the day. God knows, with change coming as rapidly as it is, what kind of jobs might be necessary in the next five years that none of our graduates might be prepared for.

We need to build education on the scale required for the future.

You know, at the end of the day, I am satisfied with what I have done. I have a clear conscience. No regrets, alhamdulilah. I’ve never felt that I’ve done something that I shouldn’t have done. I’ve never felt that I have done something that turned into a huge mistake. I always say this: God has always protected me with loyal people around me. In all this time, I’ve never once had someone who has let me down. I’ve never once had someone in whom I have been disappointed. I’ve never found myself saying, I chose poorly here — that wasn’t the right person to take. Never, and we’re talking about thousands of people over the years. The ability to choose? Thank God, it’s a gift.

The people who come on board with me, they’re working for Egypt, for the love of Egypt, so I’ve had some really wonderful people come on board.

You’re right, and it’s a great feeling to see people working for change. There’s a supportive environment and there are opportunities now open to the educated, the talented. If not now, then when? Egypt is really rising and needs these young people to help it continue on this path. I tell these young people, ‘It’s not that we want you to help, it’s that we need you. We need you on board. You’re capable — even if you’re only in your late teens, you can do something, even at the level of your community, we need your support and your help.’

We have to get them on board. We have to get them moving.

Alhamdulilah, despite all the negative messages the media insists on portraying, people are starting to realize that not everything is hopeless. There is good happening today. Many a time, people come to me and say, “Why? Why are you leaving the media to talk like that? Can’t you quiet them?” Come on. This is it, this is the price we have to pay now for more openness, more freedom, for progress. And if that’s the price, no problem —I’m ready to pay it now. Insha’Allah things will start to settle down, people will start to tell right from wrong, the media itself will start to be more balanced and to see the good happening around us.

It’s the price of change. There will always be resistance to change, always. Often, we don’t want to embrace change, and there will always be factions that will try to prevent change from happening or who will try to take advantage of it for their own benefit. But they can’t be allowed to stop us.

The government is taking a course today that is for the good of Egypt. There is no turning back. The rest of the world is moving on, and it is moving on whether we move with it or not. People have to move ahead now, and they have to realize that the government isn’t working for the benefit of the government, it’s working for the people.

Who benefits? What do these young, successful people — people who made it in business or in their fields, who worked on their own for years and made it in the private sector — what do these people gain from joining the public service? They still have young families and they sacrifice their salaries and their family lives and their privacy for what? To be a minister for a few of years? What do they gain?

They gain nothing but the opportunity to come at this pivotal moment in time and work to make a difference for their nation. As more people come to this belief in their own abilities to work for change and to change the system, we’ll make unimaginable strides.

I’m seeing this all around me now — even at the Library, which has this great, talented staff, 95 percent of whom are under 30. Half of them are women, and all of them have great educations, foreign language skills and computer skills. But it’s driving Ismail [Serageldin, the Library’s director] crazy because they keep getting head-hunted away at much higher salaries.

I tell him, though, “Don’t worry, ya Ismail. Really. You should be proud that you’re hiring and training people that the private sector wants to hire away. You should be proud that you’ve groomed these young people for better paying jobs!’

That’s Egyptian youth, and with them, we’ll get there.

No one knows more about community service work in Egypt than Nagwa Shoeib. Involved for many years in a seemingly endless list of community endeavors, Shoeib has worked closely with First Lady Suzanne Mubarak on a number of projects.

“I’ve done [community work] on a voluntary basis for years and I really see it can deliver positive results,” says Shoeib, recently appointed as director general of the Suzanne Mubarak Women’s International Peace Movement. “Mrs. Mubarak personally believes in the initiative and that it can have a transforming effect on society. I’m charged with executing her vision, and I hope I have the wisdom to fulfill Mrs. Mubarak’s goals.”

Shoeib has been an avid supporter of the Peace Movement ever since it was initiated in 2003. “Now Mrs. Mubarak herself has chosen me to deliver more strategic goals, to take the movement to a different level, expanding its impact if you will, whether locally, regionally or internationally.”

Shoeib’s current priority is the upcoming Youth Forum. “Mrs. Mubarak has now focused her attention on youth, specifically the 18-25 age bracket, and I am charged with keeping momentum after the forum ends. My mandate will be to channel efforts and maintain the network to effectively support peace building.”

It sounds like a tall order to fill, and Shoeib has already started to deliver. “The movement needs to spread the message. We need to be heard at the grassroots level, which we’ll be doing by partnering with NGOs and other organizations [] so we can work together on spreading awareness, educating kids and youth about the culture of peace.

“We’ve already started this with summer camps and teacher training. Right now we are working on activating an ongoing calendar of activities, workshops and events. We’re planning a Peace Matters lecture series [] and hosting international speakers to raise awareness of peace issues.”

In the long term Shoeib says the goal is to work within civil society “to ultimately incorporate the culture and language of peace at both the school and university level. [In the future] we plan to work with the Ministry of Education to introduce peace studies as a subject into the curriculum.”

Shoeib has already shifted into top gear for her newest challenge. “I’m proud of Mrs. Mubarak’s confidence in appointing me to this post, but I’ll be even prouder when I deliver and fulfill her goals.” et