KFUPM Organized the Ninth Forum for Non-Profit Sector Development
Dec. 7, 2019 | Outereach
On Saturday, December 7, 2019 and under the patronage of the Rector of King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals, Dr. Sahel N. Abduljauwad, the University organized the Ninth Forum for Non-Profit Sector Development.
The forum was held at King Fahd Center for Conferences and Exhibitions, under the slogan "Social investment and its Impact on Achieving the Saudi Vision 2030”. In addition to the strategic partners such as Abdulrehman Saleh Al Rajhi & Family, Foundation family, Salem Bin Mahfouz foundation, Almajdouie Foundation and Balahmar Charity, the forum was attended by experts, researchers and practitioners in this vital field from America, Asia and several European countries.
A joint cooperation agreement was signed between the university and Sulaiman Bin Abdulaziz Al Rajhi Charitable Foundation, aimed at supporting the non-profit sector and promoting social development in the Kingdom.
Dr. Abduljauwad said that the organization of this forum confirms the University’s awareness of the importance of the non-profit sector’s social role, its eagerness to maximize the social impact of nonprofit work and its attempt to transform it into institutional work. This forum reflects KFUPM’s endeavor to enhance cooperation with non-profit institutions and help them to improve and develop their services to be more efficient and effective. Building a strong and influential non-profit sector, involved in achieving the development goals, is aligned with Vision 2030.
The importance of this forum is due to the fact that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is moving with great acceleration and rapid strides towards achieving the Vision 2030, which emphasizes the importance of building a dynamic and interactive society. Social leadership and social investment is one of the most important elements of achieving the vision within this framework. The main steps to enabling social entrepreneurship initiatives lie in preparing a national plan to activate social investment and facilitate the governance and management of this sector, which helps to provide investment opportunities for social innovation pioneers. This forum aims to participate in the definition of social investment, emphasis its roles and clarify its developmental impact.
In his speech, the Director of Excellence in Development of Non-Profit Organizations Center, Dr. Hattan Tawfiq, said, on behalf of the scientific committee, that social investment aims to achieve a social impact, meet the needs of community members and solve societal problems, as well as achieving a financial return and financial sustainability that helps the entity or individual to achieve financial self-sufficiency.
Social Investment was chosen as a key element in this forum in order to keep pace with the Kingdom's orientation towards achieving Vision 2030, which focus on developing a dynamic and interactive society by spreading the concept of community participation in solving the challenges facing society. Therefore, the Ministry of Labor and Social Development introduced several initiatives in The National Transformation (Vision 2030) under the theme of "Enabling Non-profit Organizations to Achieve a Deeper Impact". Social leadership and social investment was considered one of the most important elements for achieving the vision within this framework.
The program included various dialogue sessions (theoretical propositions, local adaptation and practical applications). It discussed how to create a strong non-profit sector where the community services are integrated with the governmental services offered in this field, discusses the difference between innovation in the pure commercial field and innovations in the social field and its societal impact, and studies the successful models and realistic cases in social investment that have made a social impact.
The forum activities included recognition of the vision and creating an integrated environment and system in which the Kingdom’s social investment can develop. The dialogue session discussed the speakers’ experiences. It concluded with four discussion sessions during which methods of applying these experiences in the local context were discussed.
