DOHA: Qatar Charity (QC) has allocated $500,000 in direct funding to help finance small projects for young Arab entrepreneurs, officials have said.
Funds were announced alongside the signing of an agreement between QC CEO Yousef bin Ahmad Al Kuwari and his Silatech counterpart Dr Tarik M Yousef yesterday, committing both organisations to work jointly to support young Arab entrepreneurs through Silatech’s Narwi micro-giving portal.
The agreement follows a memorandum of understanding signed in 2013 between QC and Silatech to cooperate in technology, fund-raising and technical assistance.
Narwi (narwi.com) will be the first online micro-giving platform created by Arabs for Arabs.
It will allow visitors to the site to directly and securely contribute to financing young Arab entrepreneurs of their choice in countries, including Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Yemen and Somalia. Funds on Narwi are given as revolving donations, so that when an entrepreneur repays the original loan, the donation moves on to support others.
“Through this key partnership between Silatech and QC, we’re taking advantage of technology, innovative programme design features and crowd funding through Narwi that will make it easier to support young Arab entrepreneurs through Shariah-compliant lending,” said Al Kuwari.
Headquartered in Doha, Silatech is a regional social initiative that promotes employment and entrepreneurship opportunities for young people throughout the Arab world.
QC is a leading Arab charitable organisation, with a broad and diverse range of programming worldwide.
Through the agreement signed on Sunday, QC will provide $500,000 of direct funding for Narwi, as well as outreach assistance in marketing the portal.
Silatech will offer technical assistance to QC, enabling it to showcase selected youth development projects of QC outside Qatar for crowd funding opportunities.
The Arab world has the highest percentage of youth unemployment — about 26 percent — in any region in the world.
The only option for many young adults is to start their own very small, or micro enterprises.
Unfortunately, funding is difficult for young entrepreneurs in the Arab world to obtain.
Narwi will leverage the proven power of crowd funding to help provide this financing.
“Micro-enterprise funding is an approach to boost youth enterprise that has generated impressive results for Silatech.
“It is testimony to the vision of QC that they recognise the demonstrated impact of micro-enterprise and the region’s untapped potential of online crowd funding through Narwi,” said Yousef.
The Peninsula
