10 August 2021 www.bahrainthismonth.com interview Sustainable Development Goals’ and the ‘Nasser bin Hamad International Award for Youth Creativity’. How did you complete Estijabah’s 208-week programme in record time, considering how comprehensive the plan was? Of course, completing these milestones is not an individual achievement, this is a team effort and the team members performed phenomenally. I would suggest that the true magic comes in the reporting system that was developed based on His Highness Shaikh Nasser bin Hamad’s request and guidance. We created a full system to follow up and report on each milestone and ensure that everything is on track, allowing everyone to do their part in record time. Estijabah’s 208-week programme was only the beginning; we were setting the foundation for what is to come. Now that the plan is completed, what’s next for sports and Bahrain’s youth? For the Sports Sector, we now have a focused, single regulating and facilitating body, the General Sports Authority, under the chairmanship of His Highness Shaikh Khalid bin Hamad Al Khalifa. Having one accountable operational body, allows the reporting to the Supreme Council for Youth and Sports to be precise and the creation programmes and the designing plans to be targeted. The Sports Sector now has a clear ‘North Star’ and a clear institutional mandate reflected in the ‘Gold Only – National Sports Plan’. I have no doubt Bahrain will go from strength to strength through the execution of this plan. For the Youth Sector, there is much to be done. His Majesty the King reminds us at every interval that Bahrain’s true wealth is in our youth and they are “our hope”. We have a lot of work ahead of us and this is part of what is coming our way and we are branding all this work under ‘Hope’. The simple premise of ‘Hope’ is to understand our gems and support them so they may shine. To do so, we’ve created a full set of goals which we refer to as (5+1) which represent our aspiration, for our youth to feel safe, feel seen, feel supported, feel trusted, feel wanted and most importantly feel hopeful. We’re excited to have a large number of targeted programmes coming up including entrepreneurial pitch programmes, Hackathon Career Guidance Programmes, the Futhool podcast, the Social Entrepreneurship programme, the Youth Market and Badir. What can you tell us about the exciting MYS Infrastructure Projects? There are many sets of projects which we’ve been working on with the team, but the most impactful two, in my opinion, are the Street Courts and the International Sports City which incorporates a full master plan to cater to the future of sports. We think that Sports City and the infrastructure we’re developing around it, including the cycling and sporting routes, will be a huge game changer and reinforce Bahrain as a sports destination. What programmes did the Ministry offer the youth during the pandemic, and how did they adapt to the conditions it imposed? During the pandemic, MYS launched a number of important programmes and initiatives. We’re very proud that the operations of MYS were not impacted as much seeing that by the beginning of 2019, we had already moved our operations to the cloud – which was an incredible milestone to achieve. We then created the initiative for digital transformation of youth programmes, launching the ‘Leave It to Us’ initiative to encourage young people to participate in a set of activities and programmes – making sure that we don’t lose touch with our constituency. We launched projects called ‘Digi kit’, ‘Be Strong and ‘11 Minutes’, which highlight prominent youth experiences in several fields. MYS also amended the criteria of the King Hamad Award for Youth Empowerment to Achieve Sustainable Development Goals and the Nasser bin Hamad International Award for Youth Creativity, to correspond with the conditions of the pandemic and to shed light on international youth efforts in dealing with the pandemic. Overall, it’s business as usual and we push on – continuing to believe in youths’ abilities and potential. The Bahraini delegation at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. Bahrain International Sports City in Sakhir.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy Mjk0MTkxMQ==