DUBAI, 23rd February, 2016 (WAM) -- Emirates Foundation, the UAE national foundation established to facilitate public-private partnerships for empowering youth, used its regular quarterly private sector forum to launch the new business line of Glowork, a Saudi social enterprise which won the foundation’s Emirates Award for Arabian Gulf Youth, EAAGY.
Under the theme, "Big Data Solutions for Female Labour-Force Participation", Emirates Foundation’s first Social Investment Forum for 2016 united leaders from the public, private and social sectors, including Fadi Ghandour, Chairman of Wamda Capital and Vice-Chairman of Aramex, Khalid Al Khudair, Founder and CEO of Glowork, Muna Al Gurg, Director of Retail at Al Gurg Group and Board Member at Emirates Foundation, Najla Al Midfa, Founder and CEO of Khayarat, an online recruitment platform and Mariam Farag, Head of Corporate Responsibility at MBC.
The forum served to formally launch Glowork’s new online business proposition that connects women to job opportunities in the private sector. Glowork has built an impressive track record with its offline business securing jobs for over 27,000 Saudi women and engaging over 300 private sector entities. The CEO, Khalid Al Khudair, introduced a new ground breaking, women-only recruitment app that connects female job-seekers with new opportunities in the private sector and aims to further scale up their mission.
Speaking at the launch, Al Khudair said, "We are proud to have won the social enterprise award of Emirates Foundation and appreciate their support in incubating and backing the launch of our online proposition. As a social enterprise, our goal is to deliver tangible, measureable social value, in this case, giving women much greater access to the workforce and helping private sector entities source top female talent efficiently and effectively."
In his key note at the event, Fadi Ghandour, the Chairman of Wamda Capital and a renowned regional entrepreneur, praised initiatives such as EAAGY and its role in encouraging enterprise among youth. "I believe that we will see a growing number of young social entrepreneurs, both men and women, emerging in the Middle East, who are taking an active role in addressing the challenges their communities are facing. It is up to us to provide them with the support they need from education, to capacity building, and funding, to nurture their ambitions." Ghandour noted the huge potential for Glowork’s new app in positively impacting labour markets and called for more incubators and accelerators to encourage other like-minded social entrepreneurs.
Echoing his sentiment, Clare Woodcraft-Scott, CEO of Emirates Foundation, highlighted the pioneering role that Glowork has played to date in both serving as a role model for social enterprises in the region but also in creating a scalable and viable solution for critical regional development challenges. "It is well known that the MENA region has some of the highest rates of youth unemployment and the lowest rates of female labour force participation in the world," she said. "Clearly there is a huge opportunity for us to leverage the appetite of young people for creating social value through enterprise to try and fast track female access to the work force while also encouraging more innovation in the private sector." Woodcraft-Scott also added that the foundation is very proud of its winner and hopes to work with Khalid Al Khudair as a regional ambassador for youth and a partner for scaling up its own internship portal.
WAM/Ahlam/Moran