By Fatima Muhammad
Saudi Gazette
JEDDAH — A philanthropy specialist has called on having an independent authority that sets legislation in the sector, organize it and monitor its progress.
According to Mohammad Al-Mujaidel, the assistant of CEO of Sulaiman Al-Rajhi Foundation, said that up till now there is no place where centers that provide funding to productive families can get licenses and clear regulations from.
These centers and other philanthropy organizations need an independent government body that services them as is the case with leading Arab countries in this sector namely Jordon, Morocco and Egypt.
Speaking to Saudi Gazette after the first session of the second day of Saudi Human Resource Forum, he said there is a challenge in getting private or public funding in the sector. He noted that they need legislations to get licenses and also to ease the funding in this sector.
Productive families have helped enormously in employing women and developing better opportunities for them and their families this goes in line with the Saudi vision he added.
“We have some valuable women projects where a woman helps other women by allowing them to get job opportunities. In the Kingdom some 260,000 jobs were created by to Jana and Abdullatif Jameel.” The two, he explained, provided assistance through micro-financing, providing equipment and training to productive families.
A new strategy, he said, they are implementing is to create a collaboration between a training center and a private company. The training center provides the skills and the company finances the project and market for the product. Some women are trained on handcrafts and come up with markets for these products.
Asked about the endowment and its role in philanthropy he said that endowment is now just in real estate. “We want social investment to be able to create projects that can have a social impact and, this something the current endowments don’t provide."
The philanthropy sector, he said, is capable of contributing to the social development particularly by enhancing the capabilities of low-income people.
In the Kingdom there will be 500 mini-NGOs that will work on the domestic level to serve locals. Commenting on the recent decision by the Ministry of Labor and Social Development on permitting NGOs, Al-Mujaidel said, “What is happening is a great achievement in two years the Ministry of Labor did what it hasn’t done over ten years. But we need support, funding and more expansion. We want help with having manpower to run these philanthropies we want to attract employees to these organizations.”
In the Gulf region 9 of each 10 individuals contributed to philanthropy organizations and 63% of these donations were given during Eid and Ramadan. On the global level there are 10 million philanthropy organizations, which employ 10% of the global manpower. About 68% of these jobs are in the health sector while 18% are in the education sector. Some 30% of the global population has volunteered for philanthropy organizations.
In this USA is the leader with the jobs in this sector having witnessed a growth of about 41% between 2000 and 2010. This sector is capable of resisting economic crisis and to creating jobs in various sectors particularly health, education and awareness, noted Al-Mujaidal.
