Saudi Women and the Shura Council-An Interview with Dr. Hoda Al-Helaissi

A female member of the Shoura Council has expressed hope that the stereotypical image of Saudi women in the West will be replaced by a better image to reflect their new role in the country’s affairs. In an exclusive interview with Dina Fouad of Arab News, Dr. Hoda Al-Helaissi said that Saudi women, thanks to the sincere support of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, have achieved remarkable progress in all areas.
The full text of the interview follows:

How do you view the current position of Saudi women in our society?

Saudi Arabia is a young country and it is developing at an incredibly fast speed. We have done in 80 years what the rest of the world did in centuries. Throughout history, Arab women have played a fundamental role in Saudi society and have always been significant to the community. Progress and development around the world has been achieved through the education of both girls and boys, and our country’s leaders understood its importance from the very beginning.

What roles do you believe Saudi women can undertake within KSA?

First of all let me say that the traditional role of being a wife and mother is very fulfilling and just as important as being a career woman. There is something special in bringing up your children in the best way possible, knowing that they will be part of the generation that will take over from ours. 
Secondly, if we are talking about the careers that Saudi women can hold, the last few years have shown us that there were very few jobs available to Saudi women in reality. However, I believe the time has come for us to reach the stage where we no longer look at a candidate for a certain position based on gender; rather we need to consider whether or not this person will do the job well. 

Following the recently-concluded municipal elections where women received just over 20 seats across the Kingdom, to what extent do you think the elections will affect Saudi society?

It is indeed amazing that so many seats were won. We express our heart-felt congratulations to the winners. We believe that from the time women were included in the elections, they were declared winners automatically in a sense. Initially, a lot of people believed that there would be no female winners in the municipalities. 
We all know that change in our society is a slow process — slow according to western values but not according to ours. For change to last, it has to happen from within and not because it is imposed by outside forces, otherwise it will fail. So I believe that our society is changing as part of its natural evolution and that the municipal elections are just one part of many changes to come.

How important is it to have women in the Shoura Council? What kind of changes has been made since women entered the Council?

There is no doubt that having women in the Shoura Council is important. But having women in all kinds of other jobs is equally important. Women are half of society and practically they participate in the job market and stimulate the economy. Just as society has gotten used to having women in the Shoura, which at the end of the day is a job, society will also get used to finding women in other fields. 

Women’s dreams of becoming members of the Shoura Council or running for municipal elections have become realities now. What other dreams do you have for Saudi Arabia?

I know that your question implies dreams just for women but I believe there are so many dreams that we collectively wish to see realized for Saudi Arabia regardless of gender, starting with peace and security, because without them all other things become meaningless. 
I also dream that the stereotyped image of Saudi women be erased and replaced by a better image of their true role. I dream of a world that understands the beauty of Islam, the true and moderate version of this religion which belongs to yesterday, today and tomorrow and has nothing to do with terrorism. As for women, their road to higher places will be achieved simply because with time they will prove that they are up to the responsibility and the challenge.

Why do you think the topic of driving for women always remains a controversial issue in the Kingdom? Do you believe there are practical obstacles that keep women from driving?

This is an ongoing question asked over and over again by the Western press. Again, I believe that necessity and economics change everything.

As a Shoura member, how do you manage to balance between your family’s needs and the requirements of your national duties?

As I said earlier, being a member of the Shoura Council is a job and just like any other working woman whether in Saudi Arabia or elsewhere, I manage to balance between the two both areas of my life thanks to support of my family and husband. I have to stress that that the support of men in our families and society is vital to a woman. It is also crucial to understand that to be successful in any area of your life you need teamwork: Always consider the “we” rather that the “I”. 

What do you think of the new generation? And how, as women, can we deal with these young people and the spread of all means of communication which may have an adverse effect on family relations?

Our new generation is our hope and our future. We must, at all costs, encourage and nurture our youth through education and the transfer of all kinds of values that our central to the creation of happy, healthy lives.

Originally Published on Arab News

Cisco-Saudi Appoints Reema Al-Harbi as Country Transformation Project and Program Manager

Cisco has appointed Reema Al-Harbi as country transformation project and program manager in Saudi Arabia. Al-Harbi assumes this position with the focused aim of helping to transform the Kingdom into a fully digital city.
This position is a major milestone in Al-Harbi’s career.

Her many accolades include being the first Saudi female to earn the Sales Champion Award at Cisco as a virtual partner account manager, she was also presented with the Spirit of Emerging award. Furthermore, she initiated the process in the Saudi office that has resulted in Cisco being voted as one of the best places to work in Saudi Arabia for two years in a row now.

Prior to Cisco, Al-Harbi worked as a marketing specialist with General Electric.
Mohammed Alabbadi, GM, Cisco Saudi Arabia, commented: "One of our principal goals here at Cisco in Saudi Arabia is to provide support and encouragement to enable female Saudi employees to become leaders in the field of IT and the appointment of Reema Al-Harbi is proof of this."
Cisco is continuously seeking to invest in Saudi talent and to provide the best possible career growth and development opportunities.

Cisco already has a number of dedicated programs in Saudi Arabia that aim to increase the number of Saudi employees, the number of fellowships offered, training courses, and certificates awarded to the female employees in order to enable them to assume positions of leadership in the future.

Al-Harbi commented: "It brings me great pleasure to have been chosen to take on such an essential position within Cisco Saudi Arabia, and despite the challenges associated with the role, it is a great opportunity to be able to highlight the potential and the capabilities of the Saudi women in ICT. I invite them to become active part of the ICT development across the Kingdom.”

Originally Published on Arab News 

Women Can Work From Home Starting Next Month

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The Labor Ministry will officially launch its “work from a distance program” for women next month in seven cities, local daily Al-Madina reported Tuesday quoting an official source at the ministry.

The source said under the program, about 200,000 Saudi women are expected to be employed by the private sector during the coming four years.

In its initial stage, the program will be launched in Hail, Qassim, Jazan, Najran, Al-Ahsa, Madinah and Arar. It will later be expanded to cover 40 towns and cities.

“This is a pivotal program for the employment of Saudi women in the private sector,” he added.

The source said the ministry has already prepared business centers in the seven cities to oversee the employment of women from their homes.

He explained that the centers will be under the supervision of the Human Resources Development Fund (Hadaf).

“The ministry has licensed these centers to employ Saudi women under the official work contracts of the private sector including monthly salaries and other fringe benefits,” he said.

The source said the ministry has copied the Indian experiment in this field and has sought the help of some Indian companies, mainly Tata, to install an electronic system through which it can monitor the contractual relationship between the women and the private sector to make sure that the program is not being used for fake Saudization.

“Through these centers the ministry will be able to monitor the labor relationship between all the parties involved,” the source said.

The source said the program is aimed at protecting women from transportation problems because of which many of them refuse to take up jobs.

Saudi Arabia announced the distance work program in 2013 to expand opportunities for job seekers, especially women and those living in remote areas.

Women unemployment has been on the rise in Saudi Arabia, and people are blaming private sector for the rise.

The rate of unemployed Saudi women in 2014 reached 32.8 percent when it was only 15 percent in 2013. The rate of unemployed Saudi men in 2014 reached 5.9 percent.

The total rate of unemployment in 2014 reached 11.7 percent after it was 11.5 percent in 2013, Arabic daily Al-Madinah quoted the source as saying.

Originally Published on Saudi Gazette

This New Site Reveals How Your Clothes Were Really Made

Our shopping strategy usually revolves around hitting that clothing trifecta: pieces that look good, fit well, and are affordable (or, at least, that don’t involve utterly obliterating one’s bank account). But what if your retail approach could involve a quick check of a brand’s manufacturing practices and ethics? Project JUST is poised to provide just that.

The well-designed site, which launched two weeks ago, is a catalog and forum of research on fashion brands’ manufacturing M.O. — plus their environmental and social impacts. The objective: to bring transparency to an industry that’s been pretty fickle about disclosing much about the supply chain, and to highlight (and perhaps sway shopping in favor of) brands that are ethically sound behind the scenes. 

The site was founded by Natalie Grillon and Shahd AlShehail, who met in 2013 as global fellows at Acumen, a non-profit impact investing fund. Both women had pivotal experiences that helped spur Project JUST’s inception. Grillon had worked for a cotton company in Uganda that implemented an organic and fair-trade cotton-farming program to help farmers rebuild their lives after decades of civil war — the work was important, but customers buying the company's threads didn’t know the inspiring backstory. AlShehail also cofounded a Saudi Arabian fashion house that worked with regional women artisans; she thought there was room to improve how that supply chain’s story was told, too. 

The Rana Plaza collapse in Bangladesh a few months later led the duo to realize that transparency is crucial; fashion brands need to share the negative practices taking place, not just the heartwarming, doing-good stuff. “We didn’t set out to showcase the negative,” Grillon says. “But the more we learned about practices in the supply chain, the more we realized that, through our purchases, we were supporting practices with which we didn't agree, and we knew our friends wouldn’t, either.” Thus came the idea for Project JUST. After almost a year of development, this “Wikipedia for fashion supply chains,” as Grillon puts it, was born.

Project JUST applies a four-step filter to fashion brands: first up, self-reported information (i.e. from the brand’s site, 10-Ks, executive speeches, and sustainability reports). This covers size and business model, transparency, labor conditions, environment, innovation, intention, management, and community — “in many cases, unfortunately, it’s not a lot,” Grillon says. Then, Project JUST looks at what other NGOs or on-the-ground organizations have published about that brand’s supply chain (sometimes supplemented by further research or rankings comparing that specific brand to comparable ones on the market). Research on media coverage and investigative reporting comes next, followed by direct outreach to the brand, offering a chance to give honest input. 

Currently, the site features 47 brands, with a goal of 150 brands by early spring, including expansion into markets like Europe and the Middle East. You’ll find names like Reformation, Everlane, Warby Parker, Indego Africa, Duka, and Beru Kids, along with major chain retailers. Expect to see lots of smaller indie brands in the mix soon. Project JUST caters to what Grillon calls “female urbanite millennials” and Gen Z in the U.S., U.K., and Australia — and it's also aimed at those in the fashion industry. 

At the moment, for a smaller brand owned by a huge corporation (J Brand's parent company is Fast Retailing, which also owns Uniqlo, for example) you can only view information about the parent company's practices. But that should change as user-supplied information fills in the gaps for brands owned by large parent companies, Grillon says. 

The concept is quite similar to Australia’s Good On You app, which isn’t yet available stateside; Project JUST is uniquely focused on creating a space to spur ongoing conversation between shoppers, fashion brands, and industry activists about the topic, versus being primarily an information source for customers. Project JUST doesn’t have an app yet, but one is in the works, probably with shopping-centric maps and geotagging capacities. 

Grillon and AlShehail have been shocked by the disconnect factor, or “how little some of these brands actually do know about their supply chain,” Grillon says. “Many brands we've come across contract out their entire supply chain, only designing the item and sending it out to be produced, not knowing the factory where it will be manufactured.” 

On a brighter note, there are the covert do-gooders — labels “making incredible strides in improving their practices that have shied away from being transparent,” Grillon adds. But that lack of broadcasting means shoppers don't know about many positive practices already in place, and thus aren’t as trained to seek out ethically produced clothing. Grillon explains that "in some ways, this has prevented other brands from learning” from the quietly upstanding fashion labels out there.

Next up, Project JUST will roll out a biannual award in early 2016, called #JUSTapproved, for fashion brands that deserve some love for their ethically commendable efforts. “They have either set out to create a sustainable business model from day one, to improve or transform their operations in a radical way, are preserving or celebrating a craft or art which creates additional value in the clothing for everyone involved, or are working on an initiative we think could change the industry — small indie brands or big-name brands,” Grillon says. “We've heard from a lot of our followers that they are searching for a curated list of positive brands and practices that they can discover.” There will likely even be “#JUSTapproved” stickers given to brands, to indicate they're ethically sound. 

Beyond the current four-step process, Project JUST is now working on gathering and incorporating extensive crowd-sourced data — from shoppers, fashion-brand employees, journalists, NGOs, and industry execs — into the site, as well as editorial content using the site’s data crunching, and extensive annual overviews of each brand. This ensures that the data isn’t out of date (for better or for worse).

“Our mission is to transform the fashion industry into a transparent, accountable, and sustainable system that celebrates the stories, the people, and the resources behind the clothing,” Grillon says. “To impact and incite change, we believe that one missing — but important! — voice is the shopper’s. Empowered with information, s/he can make purchases aligned with their values, shifting demand towards positive practices and sending a signal to brands and the industry.”

Originally published on Refinery29

The Saudi Women Blazing a Trail

Hit hard by plunging oil prices, Saudi Arabia needs to muster resilience. But labor market reforms, leaps in gender equality, and a boost to the country’s private sector could help carry the kingdom through hard times ahead.

With the energy sector making up some 40 percent of Saudi Arabia’s GDP, the world’s top oil exporter has managed to stay afloat despite the impact of a more than 50 percent drop in oil revenue, plunging prices far below the average of around $100 a barrel that the country enjoyed before mid-2014.

The Saudi government has in response started drawing down its foreign reserves through a combination of heavy state spending and hefty private sector boost.

But in a country where people are accustomed to handsome government salaries, ample vacation, and foreign to private sector ventures, while a gender equality gap still holds back women from entering the job market in significant numbers, the steps might not be enough.

The pace of change in Saudi Arabia appears sluggish to outsiders, but the kingdom argues that a slow step-by-step approach is the only way to navigate competing liberal and conservative forces.

Still, significant steps have been made. Women in Saudi Arabia are registering to vote for the first time in history this year, more than four years after the late King Abdullah afforded them equal voting rights. They will be allowed to vote in the upcoming municipal elections this December and can also run as candidates.

But it has yet to be seen whether this path will be maintained by King Salman, who ascended to the throne at the start of the year.

For now, Venture features two Saudi women entrepreneurs that have demonstrated remarkable success in growing businesses that, despite the difficult environment, have reached local, regional, and global economies, and set an example for other women in the region.

The Queen of PR

Sarah Al Ayed

Cofounder and partner of Trans-Arabian Creative Communications

When Sarah al Ayed joined her brother Mohamed in setting up a Saudi public relations agency back in 1998, she doubted it would lead to a post-university career.

But almost 20 years later, TRACCS, Trans Arabian Creative Communications, has grown into one of the largest public PR agencies in the region with a team of 200 employees working across 13 markets. The agency has worked with many leading companies operating in Saudi Arabia, and it boasts multinational collaborations with the likes of Coca Cola, Pepsi, Toyota, Jotun and Hilton, in addition to local and governmental entities and banks. Al Ayed has also been ranked by Forbes as one of the most influential women in family businesses in the Arab world .

But this success hasn’t come easily. When first starting out, al Ayed said the lack of a mature media and communications sector in Saudi Arabia proved a big challenge.

“Back then PR was widely misunderstood or underutilized by those that understood its role and significance. When not perceived as a meet and greet service, PR was referred to as the step-sister or a cheaper form of advertising,” al Ayad told Venture. “The first hurdle to overcome was changing the mind-set of the public and private sectors and the PR industry itself; basically the biggest client of the PR industry was the industry itself.”

It was this glaring gap in the market that TRACCS set out to fill.

“From the very beginning our main focus has been, and continues to be, highlighting the true essence of communications, its importance, and the change that it can bring about when executed in a strategic, intelligent, and innovative manner,” she said. “As part of our commitment to the industry, we have worked towards institutionalizing public relations in the market with a strong focus on social responsibility amongst other strategic communications services for clients.”

Al Ayed said the business community in Saudi Arabia immediately understood the services TRACCS was offering up.

“The need for the PR industry definitely existed, with several leading Saudi companies and multinationals waiting on the fringes for the industry to mature and proliferate within the market,” she said. “When we started, the industry comprised of very few local PR firms with the majority being international companies with only representative offices in the market. But over the past few years, Saudi Arabia has witnessed tremendous growth and evolution within the communications industry.”

But al Ayed said it wasn’t just the lack of a mature PR industry that was challenging— she also had to overcome the difficulty of being a woman in the country’s workforce. “It was challenging because the work structure and atmosphere were not the way they are today,” she said. “Many changes have happened since then. Luckily, TRACCS happened at the right time for me, when the country was beginning to liberalize and become more open to development. Many opportunities were created back then that enabled women to join the workforce and that was based on governmental initiatives.”

Al Ayed said that the breakthrough moment for businesswomen in the country was the establishment of the first committee for women in the Saudi Chamber of Commerce, where she was a member in the early 2000s.

Since then, she said many walls have been broken down. But she stressed that the advancements that Saudi women have achieved were on their own terms. “We cannot apply what is happening in Saudi Arabia to what is happening in the West,” she said. “It is all about understanding diversity and embracing it, implementing things that fit in our culture. It is about how we take these challenges and turn them into opportunities. It is not only about the negative perception that Western media has prompted about this part of the world.”

Al Ayed has come a long way, but she’s determined to keep pushing forward. She has her sights set on higher ground, hoping to spur more change in the country. “My main goal at the moment is to engage women, to attract them into the workforce, and tackle the challenges that prevent them from it. If we fix those challenges, it would be much easier for everybody.”

The Dealer of Good Deeds

Lujain Al Ubaid

Co-founder and CEO of Tasamy

Lujain al Ubaid’s desire to help people began early in life. “I have engaged in a number of social activities since I was a child,” she said. “Together with my mother, we used to visit orphanages and homes for the elderly around Riyadh on a weekly basis. It was something I felt I had to do.”

With this sense of charity instilled from such a young age, it’s easy to understand why al Ubaid decided to become a fully-committed social entrepreneur. “I worked in a few jobs like training centers and PR companies only to understand that impacting the society was the goal I wanted to reach,” she said.

Al Ubaid is now one of the most prominent social entrepreneurs in Saudi Arabia. In late 2011, she established Tasamy, an umbrella volunteer network where people can gather to establish sustainable projects that encourage and empower youth and social entrepreneurs alike through the support of both private and governmental sectors.

At the end of 2014, Tasamy launched Kun, a 60-day program for young people to design and implement social initiatives to improve their communities. Kun’s applications spanned the United States, Canada, Algeria, Palestine, Jordan, Kuwait, the UAE, and, of course, Saudi Arabia.

Dozens of pitches for social projects showed up on the network’s website every week, where they were viewed by a judging panel who decided what ideas were worth implementing. Innovation and sustainability are the network’s main focus.

However, al Ubaid said social entrepreneurship is still being hampered by red tape, an absence of technical support, and an uninformed public. It also remains under the government radar and has no formal recognition as a sector in its own right, depriving it not only of key investments, but also of incentives like tax breaks.

Furthermore, sandwiched between the for-profit model and the not-for-profit sector, social entrepreneurship aims to enrich the community by infusing social consciousness into their economic goals. But this makes it harder to find business partners willing to support out-of-the-box sustainable ways of improving the lives of the population.

“We are doing very well so far, though it is very difficult to explain to possible partners what Tasamy does since we are one of the few organizations empowering social entrepreneurs ,” Al Ubaid said. “We are now in the process of closing a deal with an international organization focused on social entrepreneurship and a governmental entity to spread this model throughout the GCC countries and the Middle East.”

But Tasamy has another plan in its pipeline, including a fellowship program to equip social entrepreneurs with the skills they need to establish their not-for-profit or for-profit social enterprises. The program hasn’t been activated yet, but al Ubaid hopes it will start early next year.

Al Ubaid said that being a woman in conservative Saudi Arabia hasn’t been an overriding obstacle for her in developing Tasamy. “Being a young entrepreneur was the difficult challenge,” she said, lamenting the country’s long red tape and the lack of innovation and support for young talents.

But she looks at the future with confidence. “We want to establish an ecosystem for social entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs in the region and build strong partnerships to enable new programs, which, in turn, will be a magnet for new projects in the region, solving social problems and impacting the lives of many.”

By Elisa Oddone, Originally published on Venture

Saudi Women Win Awards at the 2015 British Inventors Awards

Four Saudi female students from Princess Nora bint Abdulrahman University were awarded the Diamond, Gold and Platinum medals in the British Invention Show and Awards for 2015, which was held in London from October 21 to 24.

Bedour Al-Maghrabi, Maha Al-Qahtani and Thekra Al-Otaibi came in first position, while Mariam Al-Otaibi and Bedour Al-Maghrabi received the diamond and platinum awards.

The first-ranked invention was a device for sense rehabilitation and stimulation in patients with sensory neuropathy issues. The basic premise of the devise is based on the innovation of a new multisensory stimulation program; a new treatment program using different senses to help people with impaired sensory systems improve the affected cell's function.

The same invention was ranked in second place at Korea's International Women's Invention Exposition (KIWIE) in 2014.

Al-Maghrabi and Al-Qahtani invented glasses for people with cerebral blindness which can help them to identify anything around them. The glasses draw a picture of the area around the patient and defines it through spoken words after analyzing it through a mobile app and sending it through an earpiece.

This invention took out second place and the silver medal at the Korean International Women's Invention Exposition (KIWIE) in 2015, and also received a gold medal from the Indonesian Invention and Innovation Promotion Association.

The Saudi ambassador to the United Kingdom, Prince Mohammed bin Nawaf, who visited the Saudi pavilion on the first day of the expo, expressed his admiration for the Saudi women's ability to innovate and raise the Saudi standing in such international specialized forums.

He thanked the efforts of the Saudi government in supporting and encouraging science, education and scholarship programs, giving them the top priority among its national development initiatives.

The ambassador urged the inventors to continue their careers serving their country and humanity, saying: "Nations are not built on dreams, but on work, effort and diligence."

The students thanked the Saudi government, the ambassador as well as Princess Nora University's staff for their continuous support. They also participated in the fifth and sixth scientific conferences for higher education students in the Kingdom, and are members of the Saudi Society of Physiotherapy. Additionally, they are founding members of the Scientific Research and Innovation Club, and the Physiotherapy Club at the Princess Nora University.

Originally Published on Arab News 

Saudi Woman Launches Phone Repair Centre

A Saudi woman says she had repaired nearly 48,000 mobile phones in just one year following the launching of maintenance services as the first women-only phone repair centre in the conservative oil-rich Gulf Kingdom.

Mariam Al Subaei said she provides mobile phone repair and maintenance services at her centre in the capital Riyadh only for women and that she receives between 90 and 120 handsets for servicing every day.

“I began personally nine years ago and trained myself on such services.I wanted to help our women and prevent the others from blackmailing them. I now have a centre for servicing all types of mobiles and laptops,” she told ‘Sabq’ newspaper. My family encouraged and supported me and all my female customers were very helpful and encouraging. That is why I expanded and succeeded in this career.”

She said her centre, which is manned only by female technicians, serviced nearly 48,000 mobile phones in 2014 and expected the number to be higher this year.

“My dream now is to launch a national project for the maintenance and repairing of electronic devices that will serve women through the country,” she said

Originally published on Emirates 24/7

Dr. Thoraya Obaid Awarded UN Population Fund Award

Dr. Obaid received the UNFPA Award from the Deputy Security-General, H.E. Jan Eliassion

Dr. Thoraya Obaid, member of the Shoura Council, received United Nations Population Fund award in recognition of her role in the field of population and health, and her activity in the field of women's rights. Dr. Obaid is a lifelong champion of women’s and young people’s heath and empowerment. She joined the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) in 1975, focusing on the link between women’s empowerment and population dynamics. In 1998, she joined UNFPA, and eventually rose to the rank of Executive Director. 

Originally Published on Saudi Gazette 

Competition to Promote Entrepreneurship Among Saudi Women Launched

Princess Banderi Bint Abdulrahman Al Faisal, Director General of the King Khalid Foundation, and  Mohamed Al Ayed, TRACCS CEO, sign the strategic partnership agreement in Riyadh

JEDDAH — Building on the theme of “promoting the spirit of enterprise” and with a key focus on social entrepreneurship development across the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the King Khalid Foundation and TRACCS signed a strategic partnership agreement to launch the Jeddah Entrepreneurship Meet and Competition.  The competition is a unique program that opens doors for all budding entrepreneurs to present their ideas or existing business modules to be eligible for its mentorship and funding program.  

Enhancing the development and understanding of social entrepreneurship the King Khalid Foundation will serve as the strategic partner for the social entrepreneurship category.  Encompassing a systematic participation, assessment, evaluation and training program the King Khalid Foundation and TRACCS have designed a specific process for this category.  

The Jeddah Entrepreneurs Meet and Competition is an entrepreneurial development and sustainability promoting platform open for women across the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to present innovative business ideas or existing businesses within three categories:  social entrepreneurship, manufacturing and production and educational and lifestyle development.  

The competition allows all potential candidates to apply online on www.jem-yje.com and go through the assessment and evaluation process before participating in select workshops and sessions in order to present their business ideas to the judging committee for the selection of the winners in each of the categories.  

“Social entrepreneurship is an avenue of key importance to us at the King Khalid Foundation and our partnership with TRACCS to launch the Jeddah Entrepreneurship Meet and Competition is centered on that segment as such.  Social entrepreneurship isn’t about launching an idea or doing a community initiative as such it takes on a much bigger role in identifying a challenge and innovating a solution that is applicable, achievable and sustainable,” said Princess Banderi Bint Abdulrahman Al Faisal, Director General of the King Khalid Foundation.  

“As change agents in their communities, social entrepreneurs are a fundamental aspect in the social and business arena in the Kingdom and will help identify the opportunities, open doors for innovative solutions and allow them to create solutions that help improve society,” she added.  

As one of the leading roles models in philanthropic and development work, impacting people’s lives by providing innovative solutions to critical socio economic challenges in Saudi Arabia, the King Khalid Foundation support programs  in Saudi Arabia  leader and role models the King Khalid Foundation partners with organizations to initiate and establish such programs through its grant funding.  Within the past three years, the Foundation has awarded 21 grants to organizations across Saudi Arabia, reaching over 64,000 beneficiaries.  

“The Jeddah Entrepreneurs Meet and Competition is a unique program with a unique offering and benefits that is open for entrepreneurs across the Kingdom,” said Mohamed Al Ayed, TRACCS CEO.  

He added “JEM brings together know-how, on-hand experience and seed money for provisional funding, giving each entrepreneur the success factors to be able to work and grow her business.  And our partnership with the King Khalid Foundation is an important element that showcases partnerships between the public, private and NGO organizations are how successes are built and how such collaborations are of benefit for sustainable and development programs that support the economic growth, open new business avenues and help in job creation and employment.”

“We thank the King Khalid Foundation for their unwavering support and partnership to take social entrepreneurship and JEM into greater heights,” he further said.

Serving as a platform for budding entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, financial, business entities, and governmental and business leaders to interact, foster and promote a culture of business development in Saudi Arabia the Jeddah Entrepreneurs Meet and Competition has officially launched.  

Participants can apply online and go through the process of assessment and an independent judging committee to receive their funding and 18-month mentorship program will identify selection before the final winners announcement is made at the end of the year with winners in the three set categories.

“We are excited to witness the second phase of JEM and look forward to seeing more success stories that are integral components of the business and social community.  To create the diversity in the business spectrum engaging in economic and job creation availability a society needs a strong SME base and programs such as JEM can help make an impact through the partnerships developed and the business opportunities at hand,” said Sarah Al Ayed, TRACCS Co-Founder and Board member and Chair of the Jeddah Entrepreneurs Meet and Competition.   

riginally published on Saudi Gazette 

Licenses for 267 Women Lawyers Approved and Renewed

The Ministry of Justice has issued and renewed 267 licenses for Saudi lawyers including six women during the second quarter of this year, according to a report released on Monday.

The licenses included 117 for men, with further renewals for 144 law firms. The country has 3,147 lawyers, which includes 48 women practitioners, the report stated.

A source said that the ministry had rejected 20 requests for licenses because the applicants failed to meet basic criteria to practice the profession. Three incomplete applications are still pending.

Meanwhile, the ministry has handed over eight people to the Bureau of Investigation and Prosecution for practicing without qualifications. 

A further 30 have been reported for handling more than three cases simultaneously.

The source said the ministry’s inspectors had discovered several violations by practitioners in Riyadh, Eastern Province, Madinah and others areas.

Originally Published on Arab News

Eighty Women to Run for Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province Council

There are over 80 women running for the Saudi Arabian Eastern Province city council elections in August with at least 10 female candidates contesting places on each municipal committee, a social activist told Al-Hayat.

Fowziyah Al-Hani of the “Baladi” campaign, which works to increase women’s representation in the city council, said female participation in the Shoura Council has improved Saudi society.

She believed more women in the city council would help societal development as well. She said: “I believe the Saudi woman will be a complementary addition to the city councils in the Kingdom.

“A lot of women are apprehensive about nominating themselves. They fear their agendas and plans would be stolen by other candidates if they were publicized.”

She added women candidates would always be under the spotlight in the election and their private lives exposed. “It is financially and emotionally exhausting to campaign and challenge social norms.

“Not everyone can afford such a cost but the women who nominated themselves have great courage and I wish them all the best and thank them for their initiative.”

She added no women participated in the 2012 elections, driving her to organize an awareness workshop for women in cooperation with the Alwaleed Bin Talal Foundation.

“We had a great turnout in 2012 and we will hold the workshops again this year with bigger hopes and more improvements.

“In 2012, we were introducing the concept and importance of city council elections and this year will be talking in detail on how to run a successful campaign and to lobby in the municipality.”

Candidate Hanan Al-Daham said she was the first Saudi woman who decided to run for city council after King Abdullah announced that women should participate in the elections.

She said: “I run to serve the citizen, the resident and the country as a whole. “As a citizen, I have a social responsibility and an obligation to give back to my community.

This is my first city council election but it is not the first election I have stood for. I was previously elected as the head of the National Retirees Society.”

She added the Saudi woman is capable of giving back to society and enhance the infrastructure of the Kingdom.

She said: “We will be rivaling men and bringing our perfectionism into good use. My participation in the election does not compromise my religious values and morals as a Saudi Muslim woman.

“Women in the city councils is looking up and many doors will open for us, giving us the opportunity to contribute to the betterment of our society.”

Published on Alarabiya

Measures Under Way to Help Saudi Women Work From Home

Image Source: sapienacountants.com

The Council of Saudi Chambers of Commerce and Industry has announced a series of measures to activate a project it had launched earlier to enable women, especially those with special needs, to work from home.

Haifa Al-Hossaini, director of the council’s department for women, said the project would ensure employment for more than 10,000 women every year. “Saudi women from various age groups will be able to work for private companies and establishments from their homes,” she said.

Al-Hossaini said the system was probably new to the Saudi women but is well established in developed Western countries.

An agreement was signed with Glowork, the first website dedicated to female recruitment in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), to provide the modalities and technical support for the project, she said. “Glowork will provide technical support to private companies to stay in constant contact with their female employees and at the same time assess their long-distance performance,” Al-Hossaini said.

Khalid Alkhudair, founder of Glowork, said the company will enable thousands of Saudi women to work from their homes in such fields as research, marketing, customer service, sales and other activities that can be done remotely, whether in towns or villages.

“Women with special needs can easily work from their homes to sustain themselves and help their families,” he said.

He said under the new project, women will not only be able to work from their homes but will become part of the Saudi labor market.

Alkhudair said his company will provide smart solutions to private companies to monitor the performance of Saudi women employees who work from home, including those living in remote areas.

He said the employers would be supplied with accurate reports about the performance and productivity of any woman working from home. “Glowork can be easily linked online with all the employing private firms’ systems,” he said.

Originally published on Saudi Gazette by Ezzeddin Ahmed

400 Saudi Women Graduate From Mobily’s Training Program

SAUDI Minister of Labor Adel bin Mohammed Al Faqih visited Mobily's Female Contact Center in Jeddah recently. Engineer Khalid Al Kaf, MD and CEO of Mobily and a number of company executives welcomed him.

The minister listened to a thorough explanation about the center and how female employees perform their work conveniently in an easy process which takes into account the women's nature and the suitability of their work as being compliant to the Islamic terms and conditions.

Al Kaf explained the role played by Mobily toward the female community through the provision of all necessary means to create a distinctive and convenient  work environment that suits the nature of women and meet their requirements. He added that Mobily already recruited more than 700 Saudi woman and about 320 of them work in customer service.

A brief explanation on the customers service representatives program for women to operate from  home, which was launched by Mobily and seeks to overcome all the difficulties hindering women to get engaged in the labor market through providing the possibility of working  from their homes.

The Minister of Labor was briefed on Mobily's program to train the girls on the maintenance of mobiles.

Al Faqih sponsored earlier the graduation of the first batch of 400 girls in the program, in collaboration with the National Institute Specialist Training for Women in Jeddah. The program is targeting to train 1,000 Saudi girls on the programming and maintenance of mobile phones over the next three years. 

Mobily is keen on empowering female employees to work in different sections taking into account the suitability to their nature and privacy. They are currently working in different sections like collection, companies, customer care, quality control, social communication, technical support, work from home and contact center 1100. 

Originally published on Saudi Gazette

Arab Women Leadership and Business Summit

Dubai is set to host The Arab Women Leadership and Business Summit, an event sponsored by the Dubai Business Women Council, the Kuwait Chamber of Commerce and the American Chamber of Commerce, from September 22 to 23.
The two-day event aims to enhance the role of women in various areas of professional growth through providing them with information, strategies, insights and perspectives on leadership development.
The summit will include sessions, group discussions and interactive meetings with the focus on strengthening the financial, legal and political status of women in business.
A survey, which was conducted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development recently, found that the percentage of Arab women in leadership positions has increased in the past decade. 
Yet, it also noted that there is still much to be done to strengthen women involvement, adding that a continuous support in the Arab world for women’s participation is needed in all sectors.

Originally published on Arab News

Women Employees Reshape Saudi Arabia's Labor Market

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Over the past five years, many dramatic shifts have taken place within Saudi Arabia, including the introduction of the kingdom's first co-ed university, the multibillion-dollar King Abdullah Science and Technology University (known as KAUST). Also, there are now weekly exhibitions at galleries that have opened across the country, notable in a society where artistic expression has traditionally been kept private.

According to Reuters, the country has become the biggest per-capita user of YouTube in the world, with Saudi-produced comedy shows and stand-up being widely popular. The satirical video “No Woman, No Drive” — inspired by Bob Marley’s “No Woman, No Cry” — made by Saudi comedians to mock the driving ban on women recently went viral. While nearly 80% of the population work for the government, many of the country’s younger generation are opting for a more entrepreneurial path, becoming part of a growing number of technology incubators.

This increasingly tech- and social media-savvy culture has also paved the way for new activists to emerge. One example: Jeddah-based wealth manager Reem Asaad. After Asaad launched what is known as the “Lingerie Campaign” on Facebook to launch trainings for women to work in retail, King Abdullah signed a decree banning men from working in all lingerie and cosmetics shops. The new law not only created tens of thousands of jobs for women, it also has helped boost sales for retailers, says Reema Bint Bandar Al Saud, CEO and president of Alfa International, which owns the license to Harvey Nichols Riyadh as well as the US clothing company Splendid. Al Saud also launched a luxury bag line called Baraboux designed specifically for working women.

With the exception of accessories and shoes, where sales have stayed the same, she has seen earnings increase in every other department, thanks to female employees. “In this type of society, it’s very hard for a man to make a sales pitch to a woman [about] how a red dress is her color,” Al Saud notes. When Al Saud went to her board to get a transportation stipend approved for women employees who may have difficulty getting to work otherwise, she says it was an easy sell after she showed that women often earn back three times the amount of their daily stipend from a single sale.

Teaching ‘soft skills’

Al Saud has also invested in training for female employees that goes well beyond basic retail skills such as how to use a cash register and customer service. Working with many international brands, her staff receives English language instruction so they can better understand marketing materials. Many of the women come from environments where they typically haven’t interacted with men outside of their immediate family, Al Saud notes, so “soft skills” training is also needed.

“We train women on how to interact in a professional capacity with [both] males and females,” she says. In addition, as most of her female employees are completely new to the workforce, she offers training in financial management, career planning, salary scales, benefits, and concepts such as performance pay. She emphasizes the notion that success goes beyond personal sales but also encompasses the performance of the whole store. Employees learn that they “can send a client over to [their] teammates so they will find” whatever they need.

Al Saud also prepares trainees to deal with customers who are not necessarily supportive of the fact that they are working. “We had a woman come in the other day and tell a [female employee] working in our accessories department that she should be ashamed of working in a mixed environment,” she says.

Harvey Nichols and other retailers must follow the strict guidelines laid out by Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Labor, which include an actual measurement of how close male and female employees can stand from one another. For example, they can’t work together at the same counter. In an open space, for every one male, there must be three female employees so the two genders never find themselves in a one-on-one ratio. Additionally, the company break rooms are kept completely apart and are designated strictly male or strictly female. As the inclusion of women workers in retail is a new development in Saudi society, Al Saud says the rules of the ministry make sense to her and she follows them very closely.

Charting a path

Among the provisions not currently part of federal law, but which Asaad and other activists would like to see become a requirement, are nurseries for employees’ children. Al Saud provides that benefit at her company; her female employees are typically in their early thirties with two children. While some of the women are married, others are divorced and often struggle to find work that fits in with their children’s schedules. Even male employees bring their children to the nursery, often to give their wives a break.

While providing solutions to make it easier for women to take a job, Al Saud faced the challenge of altering the prevailing view that the service industry is for foreign workers, not native Saudis. Her company partnered with Glowork, Saudi Arabia’s first female recruiting platform (which was recently acquired by SAS Holdings), and launched a campaign called, “You are my pride,” which highlighted women in the workplace, especially those in retail. “We wanted to emphasize that [although] you’re embarking on a career path and may start as sales woman, [you] could end up in more senior roles,” Al Saud notes.

Al Saud is an advocate of working women, but she sees her work as a way to bring women to an equal level to that of men — not at their expense. For example, rather than simply firing her male employees in sales after women were granted the right to work, Al Saud gave her top male performers a chance to work in marketing, utilizing their past experience on the sales floor. “I don’t want to look back five years [from now] and say there are all these phenomenal women, but we’ve ignored the men,” she says.

Asaad agrees, and notes that campaigns to elevate women are also helping to create a culture of productivity throughout all of Saudi society. “It’s about women working, and also having a generation 10 to 20 years down the line that is not dependent on foreign labor and has working role models to look up to,” Asaad says.

Breaking barriers

According to a report conducted by Cisco, 78% of unemployed women have graduate degrees, and 30% of those looking for work can’t find it. But women are finding jobs in an increasing number of sectors that traditionally have not employed females, including defense, agriculture, customs, airports, and information technology. In fact, in today’s Saudi work landscape, women employees work in all ministries. In the banking headquarters, where Asaad works, there is no segregation of the sexes as in most other sectors, thanks to the Central Bank having immunity from religious authorities.

Another area where women have the opportunity to thrive is in technology. Sarah Al Mubarak, a financial consultant at the Badir Program for Technology Incubator — where close to 30% of entrepreneurs served are women — has been working to grow the angel investing community within the Kingdom.

According to Al Mubarak, initially it was hard to convince investors to put their money in startups rather than investing in real estate and the stock exchange. Those who invest often see it as a philanthropic endeavor, rather than one focused on returns. In turn, many entrepreneurs don’t want to give away equity to angel investors and would rather bootstrap or take debt financing from the government. Al Mubarak notes that getting financing from the government is a lengthy process that can take up to a year; it is also typically very difficult for a technology business to get approval since the firms often don’t have physical assets.

There are other challenges as well. A female entrepreneur whom the Badir program has worked with was offered debt financing from the government only if she shifted her manufacturing from China to Saudi Arabia, which she refused to do. Al Mubarak says Badir is trying to get the government to change its approach and to understand that it can put a young startup out of business if the firm is restricted to manufacturing in Saudi Arabia, where costs are much higher.

While there are funds for women in micro-business, Al Mubarak notes that there needs to be more support for women with companies in areas such as e-commerce, bio-technology, advanced manufacturing and mobile apps.

“Before the oil industry came, nearly everyone in the Kingdom was an entrepreneur whether they worked in farming, trading, finance or [owned] stores,” says Al Mubarak. She believes that as more women — and men — are able to find success as entrepreneurs, the culture in Saudi Arabia will continue to change.

Published on Wamda

Mobily to Graduate 400 Female Interns

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Mobily will graduate 400 Saudi women as telecom technicians in a ceremony on Wednesday. Labor Minister Adel Fakeih will attend the graduation ceremony.

The women completed a series of courses in programming and maintenance of mobile phones as a part of an ambitious project Mobily adopted in 2013 in cooperation with the National Women's Institute in Jeddah. The institute is a one of the high quality institutes supervised by the General Organization for Technical and Vocational Training.

The program aims to train 1,000 Saudi women in the programming and maintenance of mobile phones over the next three years.

Hammoud Al-Ghobaini, executive manager of corporate communications at Mobily, said that this program, will give these women the opportunity to enter the professional, vocational and technical market especially as the Saudi market has a high demand for such specializations, particularly women workers.

Al-Ghobaini said that Mobily embraced this development program in all specialties, because the company believes in the importance of vocational and crafts training for women as it can lead them to setting up their own businesses.

He said that it is important that women be given the opportunity to show their creativity within a suitable environment with the tolerant laws of Islam.

Al- Ghobaini emphasized the importance of the social responsibility of companies. Mobily achieved this by adopting this project in cooperation with various government and private entities.

The women participants were beneficiaries of charity organizations and social institutions in Jeddah and the neighboring provinces and some of them suffer some form disability.

Amani Al-Zayla'i, director-general of the National Specialized Institute for Women's Training, said that participants were trained over past months in an interesting and nontraditional way by Saudi trainees that were specifically trained to work in the institute. This training was carried under the supervision of the Technical and Vocational Training Corporation represented by the Ahli training which provided all the support and advice to ensure the success of this program, which is the first of its kind in the Gulf.

Al-Zayla'i explained that the program comprised three developmental courses including an introduction of maintenance and programming services (applications) as well as hardware maintenance. She added that the program attracted a high number of candidates forcing the institute’s management to narrow the selection process.

The institute cooperated with seven partners from charitable and social bodies which are Al Bir Society Charity in Khlais, Association of Neighborhood Centers Province in Makkah, Women's First Charity Association, Iktifa Society, the National Committee for Prisoners, their Families and Ex-Convicts (Tarahum), the General Administration of Education in Jeddah represented by (the learned neighborhood) and Social Education House for Girls In Jeddah.

Published on Arab News 

On-The-Job Training Chance at GE For Saudi Women Engineers

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Following GE’s organized visits to Effat University in Jeddah and its participation at the King Abdullah University of Science & Technology (KAUST) Career Fair, the company has offered on-the-job training opportunities to five Saudi women engineers who will be trained across diverse businesses of the company in the Kingdom.
Hisham Albahkali, GE’s president and CEO for Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, said: “We participate in career fairs and organize student outreach initiatives to identify Saudi youth talent, and to strengthen awareness among students, particularly females, on the array of diverse job opportunities offered by GE in the Kingdom. Providing co-op training opportunities highlights our commitment to diversity and empowering Saudi women in the workplace, which reflects the vision of the government.”
As part of GE’s partnership with different universities in the Kingdom to offer co-op programs to their students, GE has hired four fresh graduate students from Effat University, as co-ops with the GE Power & Water business.
Three of them will join the GE Manufacturing Technology Center in Dammam, and another will join the Power Generation Services business in Jeddah. One Saudi female engineer was hired through GE’s participation at the KAUST Career Fair, who will be training with the GE Oil & Gas business at the GE Saudi Innovation Center for three months.
GE has invested SR22 million over three years to provide annual scholarships that will benefit 60 Saudi university students. Educational scholarships are provided to 30 students of the King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals (KFUPM), while 30 scholarships are provided exclusively to female students from various universities in the Kingdom.
With three offices and six facilities, Saudi Arabia accounts for the largest GE work force in the Middle East with over 1,400 employees driving the health care, transportation, power, oil and gas, water, and aviation businesses.

Published on Arab News 

Saudi Healthcare Executive Goes Back to Her Roots

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Ms Summer Nasief is healthcare and life-sciences industry executive for IBM.

First working for IBM in 2001, she was performing in IBM America’s top 10 per cent two years ago when she surprised her colleagues by requesting a transfer to Saudi Arabia. After all, it’s not the country of choice for many businesswomen.

For Ms Nasief, working in Saudi meant a return to her roots; she’d grown up in Saudi Bedouin communities with her Saudi father, who built oil refineries, and her American mother. “All my education was in Arabic because my father insisted my upbringing be 100 per cent Saudi. So when at 15 my parents divorced and I moved to the US, I couldn’t read or write English.

“The healthcare industry that I now run for IBM is the biggest industry that money is being spent on today in Saudi Arabia, so IBM was taking a major risk by putting a female in. My selling point was ‘IBM believes in diversity, so why wouldn’t we send a woman to the most culturally complex place in the world?’”

IBM was ranked by the National Association for Female Executives in the US as one of the top 10 companies for females this year.

Ms Nasief persuaded the company she could create a Saudi healthcare industry for them, with an initial six-month budget and a headcount of three. She just had one prerequisite. As a single woman, Ms Nasief knew it would be difficult to live alone so she asked to have a base in Dubai, which she could return to at weekends.

“I cover the entire kingdom for IBM so during the week I’m constantly in and out of hotels,” she says “The swimming pools in the hotels are male-only. There are a small number of female gyms, but they’re very limited in terms of what they have. The advantage of Saudi hotels is it’s where people can sit and eat together, because that’s where most business people reside. So I stay at a hotel in Riyadh with massive grounds, and my friends come have dinner with me at the same hotel restaurant.”

A lack of mobility has hindered the progress of female businesswomen in Saudi Arabia, where women are banned from driving. It means Ms Nasief has to rely on drivers to get around.

But she is not the only Saudi female in the healthcare industry, as it’s a more culturally acceptable field for women to work in.

“When I first started going to meetings, I wore the abaya and the sheila to fit in. As I started feeling more comfortable, I would put my sheila around my shoulders. As I got to know my clients better, I learnt how to broker meetings between the ladies and the men. I bring my Saudi side to the meetings, and as a female I sit with the other females, but at the same time I also guide the males to do what I need them to do.

“I can’t have one-on-one meetings with male clients. So I bring a male colleague to the table with me, and use that male as almost like a puppet.”

Ms Nasief says there are limitations to her role. For a start, she says, she has to work harder than the men – a challenge she thrives on.

But she acknowledges that Saudi women deserve better opportunities in the workplace.

“The government is building women-only work hubs to give these women employment, and part of my job involves working with people who are building these industries for women. But they’re currently talking about creating entrepreneurship cells in two specific fields – cosmetology and fashion,” she explains.

Ms Nasief isn’t the only female striving to break down the employment divide; this year Somayya Jabarti was appointed as the first female editor of a Saudi newspaper. In 2013 Saudi registered its first female trainee lawyer, Arwa Al Hujaili, and its first female police officer, Ayat Bakhreeba. Such pioneers are inspiring the next generation of Saudi females.

“Girls here have told me I inspire them to follow,” adds Ms Nasief. “When I did my first speaking engagement, I realised how impactful what I was doing was. I got questions like ‘I want to do my master’s degree, but I don’t want to leave my family’. I told them family is important, but just because you’re getting an education, it doesn’t mean you’re leaving your family cell.

“I took my journey to Saudi Arabia to fulfil my needs and reconnect with my roots. But now I realise that it’s about more than just me.”

Published on The National by Jessica Hill
 

Second Saudi Woman Secures Commercial Pilot Licence

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Yasmeen Mohammad Al Maimani started to dream about flying when she was just seven years old. She was not particularly dreaming of being a captain, as she was not sure what she wanted to be — a hostess or a pilot.

But she still can recall how she loved flying at a young age.

Today, 23-year-old Yasmeen has fulfilled her dream. She was trained in flying academies in Jordan and the US and recently became the second Saudi women to receive a commercial pilot licence.

“After God, my family has the biggest role,” Yasmeen told Gulf News on the phone from Jeddah. “They stood next to me and supported me. I owe all this to my family.”

“My father took my hand and travelled with me to Jordan after I completed high school” in 2009 to join the flying academy, Yasmeen said.

She is happy to know that she was the only student in her class to join such an academy after, according to her estimates, between 30 per cent and 40 per cent of her classmates said they wanted to be pilots.

“I found myself alone. It was a big shock for me,” she said with a laugh.

“Why should I object? It is a normal thing ” asked Mohammad Yousuf Al Mainmani, Yasmeen’s father when asked about his reaction to his daughter’s plans to enter the aviation field.

“God willing, there will be no field closed in the face of Saudi women in the near future” he added to Gulf News.

Al Mainmani, a businessman and father of 12 children, expressed his “extreme happiness” at his daughter’s success in getting the commercial pilot licence.

In 2010, Yasmeen got a private pilot licence from Amman, and returned home in Jeddah, hoping to get a scholarship to continue her education. She said she preferred to be “independent” and not to seek financial help from her family.

“I tried everything but got nothing,” she said.

She worked for Rabigh Wings Aviation Academy for a year. And, because of the media attention on her, Yasmeen became known and got an offer from Aerosim Flight Academy in the US to be their ambassador to the Middle East.

She was also offered a scholarship to be trained in the US to obtain an auto commercial pilot licence. She travelled to Florida and continued her education.

After completion of her training in June 2013, she returned to Jeddah, where she joined Nexus Company for flight operation services.

Recently, she passed the practical and oral tests of the General Authority of Civil Aviation (GACA) in Saudi Arabia and got the commercial pilot licence to become the second Saudi woman to obtain what was looked at in the past as unthinkable.

Hanadi Zakaria Al Hindi was the first Saudi woman to become a commercial airline pilot. She received all her licences from abroad, but only got the Saudi one earlier this year.

Before 2014, women were not allowed to take the test to receive the licence. Women were simply not allowed to join aviation.

Still Yasmeen has not been given the green light to fly a commercial plane. She is waiting for an opening to apply for a job as she meets all the requirements. Meanwhile, she continues logging on flying hours.

The required flying hours differ from one company to another. They range from a few hundreds to a few thousand.

Meanwhile, she dreams of flying one of the planes of her current employer, Nexus. She hopes she can ask the CEO, Abdullah Al Sayed, CEO of Nexus Flight operations, to join her.

“He is my idol, and that is why I would like him to be on the plane I am flying,”

The number of women captains are still very low even in other Arab countries where women are allowed to obtain the licence and take the captain’s seat of a commercial plane.

Asked about the people’s general preference for a male captain in planes, she paused before responding. “Both men and women receive the same training. I don’t think you need big muscles to carry the plane on your head. The whole aviation field is about knowledge and information. It is about how much you know the system. It is all about knowledge.”

Published on Gulf News by Jumana AlTamimi

Raffles Design Institute Opens in Riyadh

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Hala Halwani from Raffles KSA

Local women can now learn the latest skills in fashion designing in the Kingdom instead of going abroad leaving their loved ones behind, a Saudi woman entrepreneur said here.
“Future designers have the opportunity to discover, shape, attain, transfer and apply knowledge to become the best design creators in any of the following majors: Fashion design, Jewelry design, Visual communication (graphic design), Fashion marketing and merchandising,” Hala Halwani, director of Raffles Design Institute in Riyadh told Arab News on Monday.
This global educational experience has been brought to the Middle East starting in Riyadh, she said. “The Raffles Design Institute Riyadh is cooperating with the Singapore-based Raffles International Corporation (RIC) in an exciting joint venture,” Halwani said. 
“The RIC is internationally recognized for being the No 1 design specialized undergraduate and graduate school in the Asia-Pacific region since 1990 with over 20,000 graduates and current applicants,” she said adding that the new center in Riyadh will allow applicants to benefit from the specialized training without having to leave the country or their loved ones.
Raffles KSA is committed to promoting design as an industry and designers as creative artists who seek their passion and aspire to excellence, hence the Raffles Riyadh initiative, she said, stressing its motto ‘Evolve to Excel, Inspire to Empower.’
Empowerment of women, she said is a cause Raffles KSA takes seriously by providing female applicants the required knowledge and skills to become entrepreneurs and professional players in the design world through its diverse certificate options. 
There is a lot of flexibility and choice, she said, where applicants can choose between acquiring an associate bachelor degree between Riyadh and any Raffles international college, a high school diploma program, a diploma program, or a short diploma in the fundamentals of design.
“The full time study and incorporated international modules along with the inspiring and horizon broadening environment reflects the attained results of delivering a well-rounded student with unique exposure to the global design movement and culture,” Halwani said.
The Raffles Riyadh campus is impressively designed with large spacious classrooms infused with natural light; the walls are decorated with beautiful artwork and inspiring quotes from famous thinkers which make the stroll a pleasant journey to a new dimension of creativity and imagination.
“Starting Aug 31, with the beginning of its new semester, Raffles KSA promises the Riyadh community a new wave of talent manufacturing contributing to the overall refinement in design culture where all applicants will pour their talents into its vision of being the ‘Saudi Design Hub,” Halwani said.
She said that programs are also chalked out in coordination with the Technical Vocational Training Corporation (TVTC). She hoped that those who pass out from this institute would readily find jobs in the market since fashion designing is in vogue at the moment. She also pointed out that Harvey Nichols have already consented to take some of the successful candidates from the institute for employment in their outlets.

Published on Arab News by MD Rasooldeen