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Business concepts designed to build an eco-friendly Bahrain, offer an energising cafŽ and library and a social enterprise model to propagate healthy living swept the awards at the Global Entrepreneurship Week organised by the Young Arab Leaders (YAL) Bahrain.
The three winning groups - Al Tamasuk, Oxygen and Switch Green Technologies, won the Zain Dream Campaign consisting of BD5,000 each. In addition to the cash prizes, the winning teams will also be assigned mentors and provided advisory services from Bahrain Development Bank (BDB) and YAL Bahrain.
The event was organised by YAL in partnership with O2 Communications Marketing, Zain and BDB to encourage and introduce students to entrepreneurship as a career and look beyond traditional job market. Organisers said that it was aimed at inspiring young people to embrace innovation, imagination and creativity.
The week-long event held recently at the University of Bahrain included workshops on how to start a business in Bahrain and lectures by successful entrepreneurs who shared their success stories as well as expertise.
At the end of the week, 10 groups pitched their ideas to a judging panel comprising of Ahmed Bin Hindi, board member of YAL Bahrain, Mohammed Johmani, YAL member, Dr Fouad Shehab and Amal Al Dossari, president and vice-president of Dreams Come True with Zain Campaign, Samia Hussain, corporate communications manager, Zain Bahrain and Raman Jaggi, VP, Business Advisory Unit, BDB.
THE WINNING IDEAS
A convenient high quality green building concept for an energy-efficient and eco-friendly Bahrain from the group 'Switch Green Technologies' (SGT) was adjudged one of the award- winning concepts.
Mohamed Yousif Abubaker, 24, and Mohammed Ali Mattar, 24, electronics engineering graduates from the University of Bahrain, along with team mates Aysha Al Araifi, 22, and Elfya Dadabhai, 30, banking and finance graduates from Royal University for Women, are planning to offer a home automation system service that can be adapted for personal or corporate use.
The group's spokesperson, Ms Al Araifi, said: "By giving you control of your home, SGT makes it easy to conserve resources like energy, water and time.
"For example, the usage of lights can be controlled based on the time of day. The system is smart enough to know if there is anyone in the room or house through motion sensors and can manage energy consumption for you."
The group hopes to implement their concept in 2010 and are using their prize money for the start-up costs.
A social enterprise model, entitled Al Tamasuk, which hopes to spread awareness and educate people on diabetes, its link with blindness and problems related to coping without eyesight impressed the judges.
The not-for-profit venture hopes to rely on partners and volunteers and generate revenues on a project-by-project basis. The entrepreneurs intend to redeploy profits towards providing free workshops for school children and to those from lower income brackets.
Shereen Abdulla, 20, a London School of Economics graduate and analyst at Bahrain's Economic Development Board, said: "We hope to offer tailored workshops to companies and institutions to promote the need for healthy living by exposing the problems of visual impairment - a major outcome of diabetes.
"The workshop curriculum, which is currently being developed, will be tailored to the realities of the region. The model can be replicated and further refined by others to address these social problems.
"We are in contact with the Bahrain Friendship Society of the Blind to gain staff support for the workshops and have contacted sponsors and philanthropists."
Events organised by the group will mimic a state of blindness by being conducted in complete darkness to give a sense of what it actually feels like to be blind. The group hopes to partner with restaurants for giving 'blind night' experiences and with art galleries to hold exhibitions that focuses on all senses except sight.
Other team members of Al Tamasuk include Imane Al Alaiwat, 21, a University of Manchester graduate and PR officer at Gulf Hill & Knowlton; Tariq Al Olaimy, 21, City University CASS Business School graduate and in-charge of business development at Jumpstart-up and co-founder of Empowering Opportunities and Hisham Shehabi, 22, graduate from the University of Helsinki.
The third award went to student entrepreneurs from Bahrain Polytechnic for their business idea to create a library space that will help the kingdom's youngsters and businessmen and women to be more productive.
Roya Tariq, 18, said: "Our idea is to create the perfect place for people who seek a space to relax, focus and concentrate on their work. We hope to establish a library and an oxygen cafŽ with an extraordinary view, coffee and light food, internet access, all kind of books and much more. We are now studying the options that we have for funding."
The all-woman team includes Zainab Habib, 19, and Zahra Salman, 18, all second year business students.
Young Arab Leaders (YAL) is an independent not-for-profit organisation that hopes to develop the Arab youth and create a generation of leaders through initiatives in a myriad of sectors and disciplines; mainly in leadership development, entrepreneurship and education.
