Point of View: Alaa Al-Mizyen
Alaa Al-Mizyen is MEYI's Youth Ambassador from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. She is currently a student at Dar Al-Hekma College where she is majoring in banking and finance. She founded “Saudi Arabia’s Women of Tomorrow,” a student organization to encourage a leadership role for women in the college community, and has written on the role of women in business and politics, education system reform, and the environment. She represented Saudi Arabia at the Learning from the Future conference in Dubai in April 2008.
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"A New Beginning" in Action: My Experiences with US-Saudi Partnerships in Education and Entrepreneurship
It was on June 4, 2009 that US President Barack Hussein Obama summoned a new beginning in relations between the United States and the Middle East at Cairo University:
"I've come here to Cairo to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world, one based on mutual interest and mutual respect, and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles -- principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings."
President Obama went on to address the means with which he envisioned the US and Middle East restoring trust, building on joint efforts toward progress in education, economic development, and science and technology. When they were pronounced last year, the commitments made by President Obama were mere visions: anticipated, yes, yet vague in instrumentation. Today, however, President Obama's promise of a new beginning is being realized through numerous cross-cultural partnerships, the most noted being the upcoming Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship which aims to deepen ties between business leaders, foundations, and social entrepreneurs in the United States and Muslim-majority countries (MMC), including their minority populations, and Muslim communities around the world.
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The "Societal" Sector: A Wave of Opportunity for Saudi Arabia's Youth
In the wake of rampant economic and industrial expansion, high-profile corporations in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia have found themselves continuously under pressure to stake out their “competitive edge,” or that which separates them from rival firms in their industry. Forget the worn out nitty-gritty of marketing and branding theories; the latest socioeconomic trend that factors into this drive for competitive advantage in the region is that of corporate social responsibility. From prominent national firms to the smallest of enterprises, businesses – with the encouragement of policymakers and the government – are striving to generate societal value alongside expected economic returns.
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) may, more or less, be defined as a business's way to sustain profit all the while achieving economic and societal value. When any firm takes on CSR, it must first scan local demographics in addition to addressing pressing societal needs. A mere glimpse of Saudi Arabia's demographic profile provides corporations with a clear indication of who they should be addressing: the youth.
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Standing Before the Economic Fork in the Road
For some time, I was almost convinced that we were all on the brink of a recession, given that the global economy seems to be treading close behind recent financial turmoil in the United States. As a Saudi student preparing for a career in the business sector, I wondered what that meant for me and the swelling population of youth in the Middle East. I realized that a global recession would eventually take its toll on employment rates and personal income, making regional efforts toward economic diversification and development less meaningful. With financial leaders alternating between predictions of a global financial meltdown and a return to a balanced economy, much of the world now finds itself at an economic fork in the road. Here, I try to ascertain how this current crisis will affect overall employment issues in the Saudi community.
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Saudi Universities and Colleges Extol the Virtues of E-Learning
Long gone are the days when students would sit through countless hours of lectures, enduring the screeching sounds of a dying piece of chalk on an over-ridden blackboard, all the while attempting to grasp the nuts and bolts of Calculus. Fast forward to the 21st century and this scene is nothing but a cliché, a prospect that would have us all sighing bitter-sweetly while exhaling, “Ah…the good old days.” Truth is, the learning experience has transformed immensely in the past few years due to incessant technological advances. Today’s modern-day classroom tends to be void of blackboards and instead dominated by a virtual whiteboard, dubbed the smartboard, connected to a computer and overhead projector. An instructor within the classroom isn’t quite mandatory as students can instantly hold a videoconference with their professor while he or she is in another room, building, or on an entirely different continent. Unfamiliar with such a scenario? Well then, you have yet to hop on board the world’s latest technology-meets-education bandwagon, more commonly known as the rise of e-learning.
