The initiative involves having trained community leaders from all governorates as official Tamkeen representatives to communicate with citizens in their areas. The representatives, who are nominated by Tamkeen stakeholders from leading youth, social, and charitable organisations, will engage with people in their respective areas, promote Tamkeen programmes and encourage people to benefit from them, as well as channel people’s views and suggestions to Tamkeen.
The initiative will complement the ongoing orientation sessions conducted by Tamkeen’s Customer Engagement and Support team at community centers across the Kingdom, including civil society organisations, professional and educational associations, sport and cultural clubs, places of worship, and majlises. So far in 2013, more than 3,000 men and women of all ages and from all sectors and backgrounds attended these sessions, which are expected to reach about 150 sessions by the end of the year.
The Community Engagement Initiative was officially launched by Chairman of Tamkeen His Excellency Shaikh Mohammed bin Essa Al Khalifa, senior Tamkeen officials, stakeholder representatives, as well as the new Tamkeen community representatives.
Shaikh Mohammed stressed the importance of this initiative to Tamkeen’s vision of increasing the contribution of Bahrainis and enterprises within the private sector to the national economy, and achieving sustainable results as per the reforms of His Majesty the King.
“The Community Engagement Initiative will further strengthen our relations with the public and brings us closer to them more than ever before,” Shaikh Mohammed said. “This level of engagement enables us to reach more people and enterprises and stay in tune with market requirements. We hope the new initiative will entrench these relations with all the local communities in the Kingdom’s five governorates.”
Yousif Ali, Senior Manager of Customer Engagement and Support at Tamkeen praised the efforts of the various government and civil agencies that helped to launch the initiative, and underlined the ongoing collaboration with charitable societies and funds, youth centres, and clubs.
“Moving forward, we will reach out to the organisations who have not yet taken part in the initiative to submit their nominees for Tamkeen community representatives. So far, we have 15 such representatives across Bahrain, and our target is to increase this number to 35 representatives by year’s end,” Ali, said.
“We are proud to represent Tamkeen in our local communities. We are eager to help promote Tamkeen’s support programmes on the local level and enable more people to reap the benefits of its training and enterprise support programmes,” Southern Municipal Chairman Mohsen Al-Bakri, said.
“We thank Tamkeen for its trust and confidence, and empowering us as local representatives to engage with residents of the area and communicate back their views and suggestions. We look forward to seeing more programmes in the future which cater to the specific needs of each area,” Jaffar Hamza, a Tamkeen representative in the Northern Governorate, said.
Organisations and enterprises wishing to invite Tamkeen to organise orientation sessions can call Tamkeen on 17383333 or write to support@tamkeen.bh
To date, more than 77,000 Bahrainis and Bahraini enterprises have benefited from Tamkeen programmes, which include training, work readiness, and business support and financing solutions for start-ups and established enterprises.