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An unprecedented number of participants took part in The Antiquities Coalition (AC) and the Egyptian Heritage Rescue Foundation’s (EHRF) virtual training session on Saturday, April 10. Led by Abdelhamid Salah, the EHRF’s chairman, 419 people from 32 countries registered for the session on the conservation, stabilization, and digitization of manuscripts, by far the largest training event of any kind ever presented by the Antiquities Coalition. The U.S. Embassy in Algiers sponsored the free, Arabic-language presentation, organized with the key participation of the Algerian Ministry of Culture and the Arts.

“This turnout underlines a number of important factors,” said Peter Herdrich, the Antiquities Coalition’s Co-founder and the project’s director. “It shows the enthusiasm for the subject and thirst for this information among Arabic speakers around the world. It stands as proof of performance for regional virtual training to reach significantly larger groups of practitioners. And it encourages more of this type of training to address cultural heritage preservation topics.”

The training had its origin in discussion about the importance of capacity building at the recent regional conference from the same organizers on Maghreb manuscripts, digitization, and preservation. This event included high-level participants from Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, and Tunisia. Mr. Saadene Ayadi is the Director of Cooperation at the Ministry of Culture and the Arts in Algiers. “This is an example of how we can work together on a subject that we all care about – our shared cultural heritage. If we did the same training country by country and institution by institution, it would take us twenty times as long to reach all these people.”

Abdelhamid Salah was joined in Cairo by other expert instructors from the Egyptian Heritage Rescue Fund, including Hebatallah AbdelHamid, Nagah Ragab, and Amira Sedik, to discuss first aid to documents and manuscripts, collections organization, digitization and data management. “Whenever the time and whatever the experience and background, our information needs to be updated with trainings,” Salah said. “EHRF always aims to deliver trainings to the region according to our continued risk and needs assessment.”

To find out about more upcoming events and training from the AC, please email your contact information to Helena Arose at the Antiquities Coalition, at harose@theantiquitiescoalition.org.