Saleh Fareed
JEDDAH — If one wants to know where exactly the bestselling books are, or is confused what to buy and where, just ask Sijal volunteers who are spread all over the Jeddah International Book Fair.
The fair has been successfully running for the last few days with the help of a dedicated team of more than 100 student and youth volunteers who are running efficiently throughout the day and night, according to Nada Abdulaziz, the founder of Sijal Initiative. Her friend and the initiative's co-founder, Fatin Al-Qahtani, is invariably there to offer help.
Standing in the middle of the book fair venue and wearing a T-shirt with “Ask Sijal," embossed on it, Nada told Saudi Gazette that their volunteering task is not focused on guiding visitors at the book fair. She said: “We have great passion for books and reading and our primary aim here is to educate, inform, inspire and promote reading as a habit among the younger generation, whilst instilling the love of literature among all visitors."
She noted that helping out at the fair gives the volunteers work experience and an opportunity to spread the importance of reading.
Through social media, Nada and Fatin were able to gather around 100 young male and female volunteers to devote their time and skills to make the fair a huge success. "Once we got the required number of volunteers, we started to train them on how to deal with visitors and how to raise the awareness of reading among them,” Nada said.
She and her volunteers have helped around 500 visitors since the opening of the fair. “Many of them think that we are here to direct them or ushering guests, actually we are here to assist them on how to read and suggest what to read according to their ages,” she noted.
Speaking about his experience at Jeddah book Fair, a 20 year-old student, Mohammed Saeed, said: “We were excited to become part of this initiative because of the huge focus it places on the value of reading. We also were excited to assist Nada and Fatin as they volunteer so much time in this community; it was the least we could do to help them,” he said.
Most of the volunteers are not there for money but to raise awareness of the importance of reading.
Talking about the origin of Sijal initiative, Nada said: “Our passion for reading led us to host cultural reading sessions at King Fahad Library and we called it Sijal cultural council aiming to read a book and review them.” She said Sijal initiative aims to make reading a daily habit among the new generation.
