Our children’s voices will be heard perhaps louder than any other generation Saudi Arabia has produced before - but how will they be perceived in business, in society and around the globe?

And more importantly, how will we prepare our daughters, as well as our sons, to help shape and lead the country of the future?

I think these are the key questions we need to ask ourselves as we prepare for a seismic shift, a massive change in how we live our lives, one, as a Saudi woman, I must admit, I never thought I’d experience.

We need to prepare our children to be open-minded, accepting of other cultures and views and they must obtain the skills and qualifications that will help them to be the best they can be and the Kingdom the true world leader it aspires to become.

The country will become markedly different, as it reduces its dependency on oil through Vision 2030 and diversifies the economy more into health, education, infrastructure, recreation and tourism, and we have to ask how women will play their part in driving this and how we can prepare the next generation to face these challenges.

Things have changed, almost overnight. We have gone from a society where our voices were not heard and our aspirations and concerns almost ignored, to a country where we are not only being invited to participate, but to lead.

There have been massive strides made - in 2013, women were allowed to become members of the Consultative Assembly, in 2015 we were allowed to run for office in the municipal elections and in 2017, it was announced that women could drive cars from the following year.

Some say more needs to be done, but there is no denying that the pace of change has been quick and it is clear that your children and mine will grow up in a very different Saudi Arabia than the one we knew in our youth.

This change has been driven under the leadership of Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman and Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Salman, through Vision 2030, which has led to a sharp rise in women’s status, their level of participation in the workforce and involvement in shaping the national economy.

It is both exciting and perhaps a little daunting that our daughters will have very different expectations, which is why we must not waste time criticizing the Vision, but must talk about how we can help make our children the greatest versions of themselves and help them one day lead.

Throughout my life, I have seen young people sent to the West to be educated, not wanting to remain there, but to obtain their higher degree and return to Saudi Arabia to use the knowledge they gained to try and build the Kingdom’s future from within.

A strong desire is burning within educated Saudi women to use everything they have learned - from experiences of friendship, society, work and recreation. Many of these women spoke of the national educational, economic and health challenges facing them in the Kingdom and the innovative solutions their experiences in foreign lands had opened their minds to.

But many did not think that their ideas would be heard and taken seriously - not until now.

For many it was a dream, that has now been realized in the form of Vision 2030, and those, who understood the aims that Crown Prince Muhammad was talking about when he launched it in 2016, must realize that these reforms are the correct choice to face the future.

One of the main goals is to empower women in all fields, to see them as important and active partners and improve their lives, while modernizing Saudi society and supporting the economy.

To achieve these things, changes have occurred, including the legal structure being reformed to give women more rights, the public sphere transformed to be more accommodating to females and more opportunities being made available across various sectors of work.

It is perhaps too early to say if the Vision has proved successful and if the results will be the long-lasting change we hope for, but we must embrace it and prepare and equip our children to face these challenges.

From an educator’s point of view, now that we truly understand Vision 2030, its future plans and goals, we must make our children realize they need to work hard to succeed in their new society, to be unique in their thinking and not just follow the crowd.

They can develop life and career paths and earn appropriate qualifications but must also realize there will be big competition on the road towards 2030.

Babies being born in the Kingdom today and tomorrow will obviously have no idea that they are entering a country that is fast changing, so it must be our duty to make them aware from as young an age as possible.

What is interesting is that we are being asked to look outward to look in - to become a bridge across the world, and all the educated women who studied abroad in the West, be it in New York, in London, in Melbourne, Paris or anywhere else, have a pivotal role to play in this.

Not only in laying the foundations, and indeed leading themselves, but also in helping the next generation reach out across the globe.

We stand at a critical point of our future and as never before have the chance to shape it.

So, we must be ready, and more than that, educated women need to make sure their children and students are prepared to take this opportunity, not only through education, but with motivation and having the right attitude to drive us forward to a bright new dawn.

Dr. Ghadeer Talal Melibari, holder of PhD in English from University of Hertfordshire, UK, is currently working as Assistant Professor at Umm Al-Qura University, Makkah