JEDDAH, 3 July 2007 — Jeddah Mayor Adel Fakieh announced the establishment of ten new youth centers and public parks around the city at a cost of SR20 million.

The mayor said that the social service department of both Savola Group and Abdul Latif Jamil supported the new projects.

Fakieh made the announcement during a meeting with young Jeddawis that took place on Saturday evening at the municipality’s headquarters at Al-Amanah Street.

The mayor said that this initiative from the private sector reveals a pragmatic approach toward developing more leisure space in the city: namely a strategic partnership between the municipality and the private sector.

The municipality is targeting to prepare 40 locations for sponsorship by the private sector, he said.

He added that the municipality’s role lies in preparing the locations, studies and designs of the project in addition to marketing its programs and monitoring its consistency.

During the meeting with youths of the municipality, the mayor promised that local officials would take seriously the interaction with the youths and look into their needs and coordinate with other authorities in order to create a working system that would ensure results.

He said that the municipality has allocated more than 400 locations ready to be set up as public parks and another 90 locations that are good for playgrounds.

“We have established an actual plan to promote the sponsorship of these locations by businessmen by collaborating with the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry,” he said. The mayor said that the municipality has created a new program under the name “Friends of the Municipality” that would be announced at the end of summer.

The program in its first phase would include 10,000 youths who would be directly linked to the municipality through volunteer and charity work and taking their ideas to develop the city.

The two-hour meeting revealed many ideas and requests from the youths that included both recreational and developmental demands, including the establishment of a fund to support inventions, facilitating licenses for small projects, giving special facilities to rent out stalls in the Corniche during the summer, maintaining historical areas, adding financial penalties for littering in the street and establishing a public library.