Arab News caught up with the young sensation.
I graduated from the Architectural department from King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals. In 2004, during my second year in college, I had this feeling that I wasn’t satisfied. So, I started the journey of self discovery. It resulted in being engaged in many different workshops, conferences and seminars. Also, it motivated me to start establishing a couple of youth organizations, such as Live4Umma “Le’Omatina Nahya,” Environmental Design Club and AIESEC.
All of that helped me discover myself and my strengths and weaknesses. I knew back then that my passion is to help, support, motivate and encourage others, but how I didn’t know. In 2008, four years after working in different directions, I found the road I wanted to take.
Being that busy at college, I was also looking to achieve the maximum I could in everything I was doing. Having the experience in doing lots of stuff at the same time taught me how I can use my time in the best way I can. This experience, together with my passion in helping others, created my first step on my road plan, which was writing a book.
The book called “Time You Can NOT Manage” (2010), designed by Najlaa AlBassam and illustrated by Mahmoud Zaini, took two years to complete.The book targets youth since they generally don’t read. Thus, it was a challenge for me to gain their interest. The book presents time as a value rather than minutes and seconds. The title was chosen because when it comes to time, we all have our 24 hour credits. The idea is how to use them. Time is used rather than managed; time is fixed and humans are the ones to be managed and changed, not time.
I believe that knowledge does not belong to someone’s mind, but it should be shared and used to help others. So, in June 2011, Najlaa and I decided to turn the book into videos to reach and benefit more people. It kept us working for two months full time to produce 15 episodes. The whole work from writing scenarios, scripts, shooting, designing, editing and all production requirements were completed within less than 50 days.
The show follows the book path in terms of a message: It aims to develop humans and motivate them to achieve by utilizing their time the best way possible.
Najla AlBassam, Graphic Designer by profession and a believer in social change; Badeaa Masoud whose name in itself means creativity in Arabic; and Rakan Felemban is the show editor.
The story of the show is an example of the message we are trying to deliver. “Badal Daye3’s” ideas are categorized into two different titles: individual development and community development. The first episodes discussed how one can create a goal, overcome obstacles and value time, and it motivated people to start achieving. Other episodes discussed community issues that we define as problems, such as late weddings, starting a day at Fajr time and health concern, which consume time negatively.
Having an impact on people’s lives is our goal. Our marketing team fully understands that engaging with the community is far way more important than asking them to watch the show. Even though we had less time producing these videos, we worked really hard in reaching the community through all ways possible. We are motivating people to write comments and share their goals.
In fact, the show has created three different sub-projects:
Creating goals. On the first of Ramadan, we launched the project at Bridges bookstore with over 150 attendees to motivate all attendees to create a goal in Ramadan and achieve it. Many people even wrote their Ramadan goals on Facebook.
Valuing time. To show our appreciation of people’s time, we handed out 2,000 “Thank You” cards to the public.
Gaining the public’s feedback. Next week, we will be creating a public questionnaire to understand people’s opinions on our community targeted episodes.
The public is motivating us to work more through their feedbacks and thought sharing. We’ve touched people’s lives, as they are saying. We have changed few others to achieve and some have already started. Choosing the month of Ramadan to launch “Badal Daye3” came from the theory or thought that people want to change during Ramadan.
This episode represents our second project: valuing time. The concept of organizing time and scheduling it is clearly available in our days. Yes, we do come late to meetings and we do misuse time, but when we want to arrive on time, we do such as being on time to flights, exams or doctor appointments. From there, we are presenting that it is not about the “management” of time, it is rather “valuing” the time we waste by not achieving what we desire. We’ve tried our best to present this idea in the best tangible way to the community through labors. Their time saves our time. Presenting how life would be by not having them changes the way we think of time. In addition to that, it is their work that creates value of their time. From here, the message goes to the public that it is our work that creates value of our time. A “Thank You” post card was printed and distributed to the public in a message to value other’s time.
YouTube started to be a transparent tube of thoughts because of all that has been uploaded especially in this year. The public is getting to accept messages from YouTube much more than from other media channels. Also, the fact that YouTube has a higher ceiling of freedom in getting through community issues has caused more youth to contribute and watch these videos. In “Badal Daye3,” we target the youth in our messages, as YouTube is the most logical channel to send our messages through. Yet, we didn’t need that ceiling of freedom. Therefore, our videos were also published in 4Shabab TV channel and also through voice format in Alif Alif FM radio channel.
Hopefully “Badal Daye3” will continue in presenting episodes targeting human and community development. To us, this is a start. We have learned different mistakes and have understood different strengths. We hope that our impact continues and community engagements with such projects arise. However, we greatly find it important that it does not continue as a “show” to be watched via channels, but rather as a “message” to be applied in reality.
I have come to believe that helping society is not relevant to having certain resources such as money, skills, experiences or public relations. It rather depends on the feeling, passion and inner satisfaction to make a contribution to society. Yes, all resources would help and it’s true that the less fortunate will be having issues of their own to take care of, but we have seen many examples of less fortunate people driving their way through community services based on their passion. As for me, when I decided to change, the first decision I took was to be independent and create my own income. I had to work to survive through the month. Adding to this, the human potential is only limited by our minds.
