Human Capital and the Future of the Gulf by Barnett Carolyn;

Author:Barnett, Carolyn;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781442259058
Publisher: ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

Encouraging Public Service

Jobs and schools aren’t the only place to learn and teach skills and build character. Some policy analysts looking at the region see public service as another way to combat entitlement mentalities, raise academic outcomes, and teach practical skills, and they have recommended integrating a service component into educational systems on a wide scale.102 More generally, a growing interest in volunteerism both emerges from and feeds back into human capital development efforts in the Gulf. Different actors—from governments to entrepreneurs—are trying to channel this enthusiasm in ways that shift labor market outcomes. Volunteering can help young people develop their teamwork and leadership skills, their work ethic and initiative, and their communication and organizational abilities. Without overstating the significance of organized volunteerism, which still has yet to become truly widespread in Gulf societies, recent developments in this area are of great interest.

Volunteering for charitable or social causes appears to have grown more popular among young people in the Gulf over the past decade,103 although quantifying the phenomenon and mapping its ebbs and flows remain difficult. One example of such activity is a volunteering program sponsored by the Emirates Foundation for Youth and Development, a semipublic organization that rebranded and refocused in 2012 to focus on youth, social inclusion, and leadership. This program reportedly counts more than 33,000 registered volunteers and has proven popular among young people as a venue for spending time with one another, developing skills, and giving back to their community.104

In Saudi Arabia, a surge of grassroots enthusiasm for volunteering after the 2009 floods in Jeddah tapped into young people’s interest in contributing to their communities and has spurred the creation of multiple volunteering associations. Because of restrictions on forming associations or NGOs (as well as surveillance of informal activities), traditional “third sector” or nongovernmental activities often appear in Saudi Arabia within corporations’ social responsibility programming, where charity and social activism can flourish more easily because they occur under the patronage of the company’s leader, usually a prominent and well-connected citizen. One company in the Eastern Province sponsors activities like fundraisers for medical research and treatment, which it says attract thousands of young people wishing to participate.105 Yet new, independent initiatives are also taking root. For example, television personality Ahmed al-Shugairi, who has 7 million Twitter followers and is host of a popular show called Khawater, promotes a website called Ihsan that helps volunteers sign up for and coordinate activities.106 On his television show and elsewhere, Shugairi frequently urges young people to take social improvement into their own hands. In Dammam, another public figure, Najeeb al-Zamil, has made it his mission to provide aspiring volunteers with an associational “umbrella” to help legitimize their work.107 The rise of access to social media and the Internet more generally—the vast majority of Saudi youth own smart phones—has enabled connections to develop in new ways.108

The government may be joining the bandwagon. Last summer, it announced a new initiative, Sons of the Homeland, which aims “to serve Saudi society and encourage youth

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