Egypt sets world record for largest aid convoy

Egypt has set a new record for the world’s largest aid convoy with 470 trucks, breaking the previous record of 416 held by the Netherlands since 2004.  

The Long Live Egypt Fund, which supports poor families through initiatives and activities that provide social protection, targeted a million families in all the country’s governorates with the convoy. 

It had 1 million cartons of foodstuffs and 2,000 tons of poultry. There were 1 million blankets as part of the Safe Winter initiative from the Ministry of Social Solidarity and the fund to protect families from the cold.

It had 500,000 items of clothing, 1,500 dialysis machines to serve 120,000 patients, and 1,000 wheelchairs for distribution.

The convoy also included equipment, nets, clothes and shoes to support around 50,000 small-scale fishermen nationwide. It will help orphaned girls who are about to get married by providing about 2,000 of them with basic equipment. Loom devices and equipment were distributed to 3,000 families to activate and support handicrafts. 

The cost of the initiative has reached EGP1 billion ($63.88 million) and is dedicated to serving 1 million citizens. It has entered the Guinness Book of Records as the largest humanitarian aid initiative in the world.

On Friday the Minister of Immigration and Egyptians Expatriates Affairs Nabila Makram invited Egyptians living in the UAE to attend the lighting of Burj Khalifa with the Egyptian flag and the Long Live Egypt Fund logo to celebrate its registration in the Guinness Book of Records, after its success in organizing the largest poultry donation convoy in the world, the largest convoy of foodstuffs, consisting of 300,000 boxes of foodstuffs, and the largest convoy of aid trucks in the world.

The convoy set off on Nov. 20 to poor villages in 27 Egyptian governorates to distribute food with the participation of civil society organizations to ensure the speedy delivery of goods.

Tamer Abdel Fattah, executive director of the fund, said the organization was not satisfied with breaking two records and sought an official attempt to break the previous record for the largest convoy of trucks in the world.

He said the convoy’s success could be traced to the fund’s keenness to mobilize many parties to engage in community and volunteer work in Egypt through material and in-kind donations for the benefit of the fund, as well as through hundreds of young volunteers to serve families.

Volunteers participated in distributing the convoy’s contents to people in villages and remote areas.

The fund dispatched the convoy to the far end of the Egyptian border, distributing food and blankets to the residents of Bir Al-Abd, Rafah and Sheikh Zuweid in North Sinai Governorate, in addition to the Wadi Al-Allaqi area, which is about 180 km from the city of Aswan.