She is an active member of the Royal Family of Bahrain. A lady of promise, she holds various important portfolios, including the Chairmanship of Al Salam Bank Bahrain. Her vision to nurture and empower the youth of Bahrain led her to found Injaz Bahrain, an organization that helps Bahraini youth to succeed in global economy. BTW is immensely honoured to have HH Shaikha Hessa bint Khalifa Al Khalifa on Spotlight this week to learn more about her great vision and dream for the youth of Bahrain.
Can you please throw a little light on INJAZ Organisation and the upcoming event, what has been your vision behind this?
Thank you for very much and it’s my pleasure to be with Bahrain This Week.
INJAZ Bahrain’s mission is to prepare young people to enter the Global Economy. Next week we have a major Regional Arab Competition, where young teams from 13 Arab countries are coming to Bahrain. These student companies started INJAZ programs in their schools and have successfully passed their national competition and now are entering the regional competition. A student company is formed after 6 months of entering the company programs that all INJAZ Organisations across 13 Mena countries offer.
How according to you Bahrain provides its youth opportunities to reach out to their truest potential in Bahrain ?
In the Kingdom of Bahrain, we have highly available education system, curriculum that covers all aspects that the child needs from literacy and numeracy but we see INJAZ as a compliment to the Ministry of Education Curriculum as it teaches children entrepreneurship, financial literacy and work readiness skills that they need to enter the labor market.
What have been some of the challenges that you have faced in the course of your illustrious career especially while building up INJAZ organization and how have you overcome them so far.
INJAZ Bahrain is a voluntary organization. It’s a non-profit organization, so we had to, first of all, form a board of directors from the large corporations in kingdom of Bahrain and secondly, we had to get the volunteers to go to schools to teach the programs. The basis of the programs is that the volunteer from the private sectors goes into the school and teaches the programs. Why do we use volunteer because the volunteer passes his / her work experience on to the children. In fact, the volunteer is building the bridge between the world of work and the school.
How do you think the spirit of entrepreneurship can be boosted further in Bahrain?
I think that to have entrepreneurship program available at young age is one step, which INJAZ provides. Second step is also, mashallah, in Bahrain we have a lot of incubators available such as SCW i.e; Supreme Council of Women incubators with Bahrain Development Bank and extended programs available from Tamkeen. So all this forms a network where once the citizen reaches the appropriate age of 21 and above after they finish their education and can then participate in taking these programs that Tamkeen, BDB and SCW offers. In Bahrain we have lot of support for entrepreneurship and I must say that the Ministry of Social development also has a program called Khidwa which takes micro enterprises from under 18 youngsters. We also encourage our students if they want to start their business activities from 18 years old because then they can start at Khidwa with their support.
What according to you are the qualities in an individual that can help them in being successful entrepreneur?
To be a successful entrepreneur, an individual needs to have strong educational Background. Finishing school and finishing university is very important because during those years the person acquires necessary skills and knowledge that will enable them to have necessary competency to start their business. It not a simple matter to start your own business. This will reduce the instance of failure. Another important skill that an entrepreneur needs is the ability to take risk and I think therefore financial knowledge is very important and if they have not gained that during the university studies I think it’s an important field that they need to keep in their knowledge. Otherwise everything in the economy is available to support an entrepreneur in financial sector, government sector and I would like to really encourage young people to take the opportunities available to them and I wish them all the best in their future.
Your message to the Youth of Bahrain reading Bahrain This Week.
My message to the youth of Bahrain reading Bahrain This Week is to take every opportunity they have available. Do not say ‘No’ even though at the instance it may seem irrelevant to you now but one day it might be very relevant. Don’t say no to any opportunity or any course coming your way. Please grab it and inshallah you will see your success ahead of you.