The Impact of the Saudi Fast Growth 100

The second annual list of Saudi Arabia's fastest growing emerging businesses was released last night at an Awards Gala at SAGIA's 4th Annual Global Competitiveness Forum in Riyadh.

The list reveals a diverse array of robust companies, the majority founded by young and ambitions entrepreneurs -- both male and female. Saudi Fast Growth 100 winners all have a track record of extraordinary revenue growth, while accounting for the creation of thousands of new jobs.



Read the FULL LIST of winners.

King Abdullah II Awards Youth Innovators for Community Projects

During the closing ceremony of the World Economic Forum on the Middle East (held at the Dead Sea from 15-17 May 2009), King Abdullah II of Jordan honored four winners out of ten outstanding Arab youth finalists for leading pioneering efforts in their communities to improve people’s lives.

The winners of the King Abdullah II Award for Youth Innovation and Achievement were:

• Rabee Zureikat, 29, Jordan - Project aims to promote greater equality through volunteerism, cultural exchanges and micro-loans
• Lana Hijazi, 27, Palestine - Launched a mobile-based service matching job seekers and employers
• Abdelkareem Bedri, 22, Sudan - Works with the hearing impaired to increase learning and employment opportunities among this vulnerable group
• Raghda El Ebrashy, 26, Egypt - A YouthActionNet ® Global Fellow, who addresses the economic needs of youth and women in Old Cairo by offering them vocational training and job placement support.

The awards program was launched by the King Abdullah II Fund for Development (KAFD) in partnership with the International Youth Foundation (IYF) to support young social entrepreneurs in the Arab World.

KAFD was supported throughout the award process by YouthActionNet®, which is the International Youth Foundation’s youth leadership initiative that has provided 140 young leaders from 55 countries with capacity building and leadership training through its global fellowship program.

To learn more about the finalists, click here
For more information on IYF’s YouthActionNet program, click here

Art in Public

A number of students from the Introductory Seminar had expressed an interest in "Youth issues"... I've been keeping my eyes and ears open for interesting ideas and programs, so here is one for you:

Voices of Youth: Art in Public



The competition seeks to identify ideas that will generate well-designed, sustainable public art that expresses the voices of youth in Pittsburgh.

Could something like this work in Jeddah? If so, how could Art be integrated into the Saudi cultural context?

BBC: World Challenge 09

In it's fifth year of competition, World Challenge 09 is a global competition aimed at finding projects or small businesses showing enterprise and innovation at grassroots level from around the world that have shown enterprise and innovation at a grass roots level. It is about championing and rewarding projects and businesses which have made a real difference.

If you have any nominations, make them HERE!