JEDDAH, 24 April 2003 — “There is a fundamental difference between the West and Saudi Arabia. In the West, 90 percent of jobs are generated by small and private business. Here, the situation is the reverse,” said Hani Khoja, marketing director of Modern Products Co.

He was speaking at the presentation of the first Pringles Young Businessman’s Initiative Award, comprising a check for SR15,000 and a package of long-term business mentoring.

The first two recipients, Fawaz Al-Saaed and Essam Al-Shihri, were chosen from hundreds of applicants, each of whom was judged on the originality and the quality of the business plan.

The initiative is intended to encourage young Saudi men and women to start their own businesses and grow them into the corporations and employers of the future.

“We are blessed here with education and organization, and we felt it was time to take ‘the best of the West,’ combine it with our culture and encourage the young to add the passion and hard work to take it on from there,” said Khoja.

“Many of the best ideas came from women and we are right now building a team of female business mentors to be able to make awards to women next time,” he added.

Many of the entrants submitted ideas that showed insufficient imagination; some simply involved opening a shop, hiring help and waiting for the profit.

“That is not what this is about at all. We were looking for energy, dedication to an idea and the willingness to work but above all, passion for the project,” Khoja explained.

The two winning ideas were very dissimilar in approach, but both very original. Essam, who works in the recruitment department of a major hospital, got his idea quite literally from street level. “Roller-blading is my great passion,” he said, “and a group of about 22 of us practice regularly on the Corniche. Someone asked if we could distribute leaflets for him on roller-blades, so we did.”

This was the beginning of a business.

In the short time he has been building his leaflet distribution service, advertising by sending major companies CDs and speeding round Jeddah on roller-blades, he has a portfolio of 12 clients.

He is very clear about his goals.

“Now I want to open and manage a skate-park in Jeddah. Roller-blading is a physical and challenging sport,” said Essam, “but I intend to encourage and develop it in the Kingdom and take a Saudi team to compete internationally.”

He is now working to attract sponsors for the project and realize his dream.

“It’s very obvious that the government is watching us run the initiative, to see where it goes,” said Khoja. “After about eight months, they are more comfortable than at first. They have taken a ‘watching brief’ and are staying at a discrete distance to see how the project develops.”

The other winner, Fawaz, identified a need at community level and put forward a practical proposition to solve them.

“We have a lot of community issues that too few people are taking any steps to solve,” he said, “they may be localized or national, but somehow we have to take the first step to tackle issues.”

He gave one example.

“Teenagers don’t like taking orders or instruction, especially about driving. I decided to approach the high accident rate from the other side, the result of an accident, rather than driver instruction.”

He intends to set up courses in first aid, particularly addressing the need of accident victims, where teenagers can learn useful first aid skills and see the results first hand of reckless driving.