Supporting youth learning & development
Across our global footprint young people face a range of issues, including high unemployment and a lack of education opportunities. Ooredoo is doing its part to support the growing number of young people who are turning to mobile and online solutions as a way of overcoming these challenges to further their own learning and development.
Palestine "Learn English" services
Ooredoo companies have played a pioneering role in the provision of mobile education, with Ooredoo's Wataniya Mobile in Palestine launching "Learn English" services for mobiles that enable young people to develop key language skills.
Myanmar "Beyond Access" programme
Illiteracy, both traditional and digital, is a big barrier to development in Myanmar. In response, Ooredoo has transformed public libraries across Myanmar into modern community hubs that provide access to information and technology. To help educate communities on the benefits of connectivity, librarians at participating libraries receive critical training in the skills necessary to facilitate use of technology and to share understanding of the ways in which technology can improve people’s lives.
Tunisia "Make Me Succeed" platform
The Najjahni (“Make Me Succeed”) platform of mobile education and employment services in Tunisia, launched in collaboration with Silatech. It supports youth education, employability and financial inclusion in a country where young people are faced with a forty percent unemployment rate.
Startup incubators and accelerators
Across our footprint, we are passionate about powering innovation and supporting entrepreneurs in all stages of growth and development. We support a range of initiatives mostly focused on encouraging entrepreneurial youths and the community in many of the markets across our global footprint.
Tunisia
Ooredoo’s Start-Up Factory, is an end-to-end incubator and support programme for young developers looking to create ICT-related start-ups.
ACT Ooredoo Tunisia
ACT with Ooredoo is a contest designed to select the best non-profit project through the vote of internet users. The platform is meant to help the local in Tunisia to promote their projects and collect likes to win the prize. The idea is to transform useless "likes" on Facebook into a good deed to make a change in the community.
Kuwait
The Ooredoo Kuwait volunteering programme attracts hundreds of young people and helps train them before matching them with volunteering opportunities in Kuwait.
The award-winning programme won recognition from the Kuwait Ministry of State for Youth Affairs and volunteers from the programme work on a broad spectrum of projects across Kuwait and even outside in refugee camps in Jordan. Initiatives included managing meal distribution of 17,000 iftar meals throughout the month of Ramadan, in distribution centres outside its head office and in an iftar tent.
Algeria
iStart has supported 20 start-ups and enabled Ooredoo Algeria’s Training Institute to provide training to 6,000 students at 15 universities and business schools. iStart supports a range of initiatives, including Algeria’s first mobile app store, “The GeekFtour” developer summit, and developer training.
“Oobarmijoo” (which in Arabic means “I develop”), supports mobile app development under the label "Made in Algeria” has had more than 5,000 participants.
Indonesia
Indosat runs one of Indonesia's most prominent and oldest tech competitions and hackathons, Indosat Ooredoo Wireless Innovation Contest (IWIC) which has produced more than 2,000 apps over the years.
The IWIC aims to create a pool of digital talent in the country and nurture the young generation as future “technopreneurs”. In 2016, IWIC raised the programme to a global scale, giving the opportunity for Indonesia’s young entrepreneurs to compete with talent from other countries. The programme has inspired more than 3,500 young digital talents with more than 750 female participants.
Indosat Ooredoo also supported and inspired the young to create innovative technology and digital applications through its Ideabox initiative. Ideabox has so far seen two of its graduates valued at over US$1million.
In partnership with Softbank, Indosat and Ooredoo operate the SB ISAT Fund which invests to help start-ups progress through growth stage to mature stage development.
Qatar
Ooredoo and the Applied Innovation Institute launched the Arab Mobile App Challenge in 2013 to encourage young people across the region to develop their own Apps. In 2014 the initiative welcomed nearly 700 regional teams from 14 Arab countries.
To help young entrepreneurs in Qatar with great ideas for digital businesses, Ooredoo has teamed with the Qatar Business Incubation Center (QBIC) to help support participants businesses grow and develop.
Ooredoo Maldives
Ooredoo Maldives donated ‘Ooredoo Smart Campus’, a cloud-based education solution powered by Microsoft in Education, to Maldives Polytechnic, a local educational institute that provides free courses to students.
Smart Campus provides an end-to-end solution for distance education and has enabled Maldives Polytechnic to offer free technical and vocational education to young people.
New Horizons research
A major part of working with our communities is listening to them, understanding their needs and using this insight to deliver a pathway to a brighter future.
A "Personal" Vision for Human Growth
We understand that young people are not only the customers of the future, but the next generation of great minds, who will change societies and challenge us to do better. To that end in 2014 we undertook an in-depth online study of the digital attitudes and aspirations of young people across the MENA region and Indonesia in a series of research called "New Horizons". This landmark study brought to life the optimism, idealism and commitment of the next generation – and reminded us once again of our responsibility to help young people achieve their life goals. A summary of the findings can be found below along with links to dedicated microsites for each of the reports.
Middle East and North Africa research: Download the report
