Dar Al-Hekma students organize CSR seminar

JEDDAH — Banking and Finance students at Dar Al-Hekma University organized a seminar on corporate social responsibility within the activities of the "corporate finance" course recently. Dr. Karima Saci supervised the event. Director of Social Responsibility in Dallah Al-Baraka Group Yasser Yamani, Director of Social Responsibility at Abdul Latif Jameel Group Nayef Al-Rubaie and co-founder of the Impact with Deed Foundation Fida Al-Hassan participated gave lectures on the importance of corporate social responsibility, communities and volunteerism. Dr. Amal Al-Tigani, vice president for financial and administrative affairs and director of the financial department at Dar Al-Hekma University, opened the seminar and displayed a PowerPoint presentation about social responsibility, its history and development. Al-Hassan started her presentation by explaining what made her and her partner decide to create a specialized institution of social responsibility. She said social responsibility is divided into three categories depending on the degree that communities and companies take advantage of. The first category is the one that provide little benefit to the communities and companies that are the small enterprises. The second category has a bigger advantage as it is about campaigns, whether they are awareness or support campaigns. Al-Hassan said the third category, which is a partnership with the beneficiaries to continue ongoing assistance, has a major benefit for both communities and companies. Yamani stressed on the importance of volunteerism in businesses and how companies take advantage of enthusiastic volunteers and their outlook for the communities and how they support the communities. He said Dallah Academy is the first of its kind institution in the Middle East that succeeded because of the determined efforts of volunteers. Yamani ended his speech by motivating the students to start voluntary work and help the community with determination. He said this is the core of planning voluntary projects. "If you fail in planning, that is because you planned to fail," he added. Al-Rubaie spoke about the programs of Abdul Latif Jameel Group to assist all members of the community. He said a numbers of competitions were organized by the group involving students from different universities, and in the latest contest a student from Dar Al-Hekma won the first place. Also a number of new projects and ideas in Abdul Latif Jameel Group programs are derived from the creative thinking of Dar Al-Hekma alumna. The seminar concluded with a word from Dr. Inas Ali, dean of the Hekma School of Business and Law, thanking the speakers and presenting certificates of appreciation to them. She also thanked the students for organizing the seminar. — SG