The concluding day of the third CSR forum yesterday featured solutions to fight unemployment and poverty, in pursuance of the goal of sustainable development.
Many private companies and non-profit organizations presented their CSR plans in keeping with the growing community needs.
Thamer Shaker, HR and CSR manger at Nesma Holding, participated in the third session titled “Business and entrepreneurs.” He emphasized the need for meeting the needs of the community. Training and tackling unemployment is the CSR plan that his company is following, he added.
“We started our CSR plan in 2008 where we were looking to fill the gap between the graduates and market needs. We found out that establishing the process of training as part of the company’s CSR plan is the only way to change the lifestyle of the unemployed,” Shaker said.
He added: “Most cases of service termination in Saudi companies are because they lack training programs. The Ministry of Labor also indicated that in most of the cases employees leave as they find it difficult to handle their jobs. This has led us to create a department that manages both HR and CSR together. This technique helped us to raise the employees’ commitment to his career. Another factor we realized in Nesma Holding is that our employees take pride in showing their commitment to the work we give them depending on their qualification, aptitude and experience. We are committed to reduce unemployment and share the responsibility in this national endeavor.”
Shaker said: “Our CSR is focusing on enabling youth to be successful workers, so we are always looking for partners who share the same beliefs and values.”
Mahmoud Al-Chami, CEO of Bena’a Productive Families Center (JANA), mentioned a micro financial bank as an effective CSR tool. This tool is aimed at offering small loans to Saudi women and families to venture into startups.
“We have succeeded in changing the life of many poor families, making them productive. Many would ask if these loans are worthy. The answer is yes; it’s the best technique to fight poverty. We got the loan installments from the sales of the productive families where last year they gave us SR 400,000. This amount of profit is big part of our budget for the current year,” he said.
He added: “This strategy has been followed in several industrial communities like China, Singapore and Malaysia. Now is the best time to start fighting poverty.”
Referring to the Ministry of Social Affairs reports, Al-Chami stated there are 100,000 poor families in Saudi Arabia, while the Ministry of Labor said there were 2,000,000 unemployed in the Kingdom.
Nayel Fayes, CEO of INJAZ-Saudi Arabia, stated that CSR plans should be designed to meet the society’s needs.
“As a non-profit organization, we have to convince the private sector companies to cooperate with us and launch an effective CSR plan. CSR is not charity, rather it is an investment,” he said.
To attract private companies to participate in CSR plans, we need to tell them about returns from the investments made in an effective CSR tool.
CSR holds key for reducing unemployment, poverty
