Prince Khalid Al-Faisal, Emir of Makah region, promised Monday to support a proposal to help young Saudi entrepreneurs start their businesses. This came during a youth dialogue session with six young Saudi business owners at JEF 2012. The Prince highlighted three strategic points that must be considered by young Saudis to be successful in business. The first point was building human values. The second was on being partners in development. The final point was on not blaming others, but doing “it yourself”. Prince Khaled criticized those lazy people who use social networking sites to focus on negative things without proposing any solutions. The Prince gave an example of a video he recently saw which fostered the spirit of entrepreneurship. “I saw a young Saudi man on TV who spoke about how he became a self-employed successful e-trader from being an unemployed in the past. He took advantage of the Internet and started his own business, which is earning no less than SR9,000 a month,” the Emir said. After the Prince's speech, Al-Arabiya TV presenter Turki Al-Dakhil introduced the six young male and female entrepreneurs, selected by the JEF's management, to talk about their business initiatives. The six entrepreneurs were Mohammad Al-Bakri, founder and owner of the Young Initiative Group (YIG) for volunteer work; Rayan Karkadan, creator of a Twitter hashtag service “#McJigger” for health education; Ala'a Al Mazyan, owner of youth business consulting service Istethmar est.; Anwar Abulkhair, owner of Al-Nabtah Group for environmental education and enlightenment; Misha'al Al-Harsani, owner of 20 patents in the humanitarian field and director of Talents Center at the College of Business Administration; and Ammar Yasser Shawoosh, founder of Kader group for part-time jobs. Ammar Yasser Shawoosh said the most difficult obstacles entrepreneurs face is in building their businesses. The main difficulties are in dealing with government bodies when carrying out projects. The strict procedures, necessary official paperwork, complex requirements to deal with the private sector and the community, and lack of investors, management experts and media support. Shawoosh said these problems could be overcome by one comprehensive solution. “The proposal suggests establishing of a special incubator for youth projects which will be an independent entity recognized by the government and responsible for supporting young initiatives and projects of Saudis.” Prince Khalid praised the idea and promised his utmost support to bring this concept into reality. __
