Nayla Al Nama, Senior Environmental Analyst, ExxonMobil, and Abdullah Al Bakri, Community Development Manager, ROTA, announcing the ROTA ExxonMobil 2016 Leadership Training Programme, held at the Education City yesterday. Pic: Salim Matramkot / The Penin
D0HA: More than 45 youth, majority of whom are Qataris, are taking part at the annual Reach Out To Asia (ROTA) Youth Challenge: Leadership Training programme which kicks off next week.
The participants aged 16-26 will undergo months-long training aimed at equipping them with the knowledge and skills for enabling them to play an active role in developing their communities.
“We received around 280 applications for this year. We focused on quality of the aspirants conducting personal interviews to select the 50 best candidates to undergo intensive training on leadership,” Abdulla Al Bakri, Community Development Manager, ROTA, told the media at a press conference yesterday.
Hundreds of young people have already benefited from the programme since it was launched six years ago.
“This programme started in 2010 and usually we have 50 to 80 candidates each year. The invitation was open to everyone but as a Qatari organization we give priority to Qataris and this year we have around 42 Qatari participants,” said Al Bakri.
The first phase of the training programme will take place from October 26 to 29 during which participants will be given detailed description of the programme, working mechanisms and what will be expected of them during the programme.
The entire training course will run until March next year.
“They will be split into six groups, do their projects from planning to implementation and finish them by February. In March we will have the Empower Youth Conference in which they will showcase their projects in an exhibition,” he said.
An effective tool for developing and fine-tuning youth skills, the ROTA Youth Challenge helps young people chart their career paths, and prepare them to become qualified ambassadors for Qatar and ROTA at international conventions.
During the Leadership programme, participants will gain core leadership, project and community service campaign management skills, and leverage their goal setting capacities while networking with peers.
“It is vital that we invest in the development of our youth as this will ultimately lead to the successful advancement of Qatar, the region, and world. I am confident that participants will walk away from the programme feeling confident in their ability to take humanitarian action and offer meaningful solutions to some of the many challenges facing us today,” said Al Bakri.
“Qatar’s youth have the capacity to become leaders who can inspire and mobilise others. They just need to be equipped with the right skills and tools to do so,” said Alistair Routledge, President and General Manager for ExxonMobil Qatar which is sponsoring the programme.
“We are very pleased to support the ROTA Leadership Training programme as it builds the professional capacities of youth, providing them with the skills that will allow them to be successful, guiding them to be leaders of social development,” added Routledge.
