Riyada for Social Innovation S.A.L.

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Riyada (a term in Arabic which refers to pioneering and entrepreneurship) for Social Innovation SAL is a community changer that focuses on planting the seed of social entrepreneurship in the youth (13-24 years) through innovative educational programs. Riyada is building an online social innovation education under the name "Shabab Lab" which intends to revolutionize the perception of the meaning of entrepreneurship for the youth by making them experience the power of social change. To do so, we have devised a complete educational program focusing on three pillars: entrepreneurship, technology, and community engagement. The participating youth on the platform will go through an ideation process where they will choose a social problem in their communities and will work in teams to create a solution for this problem. Through the online program, they will learn the technical and entrepreneurship skills that will help them implement their solution and turn into a viable and sustainable business. Thus we are planting the seed of social entrepreneurship in the youth through engaging them in hands-on projects and technology projects to solve real problems in their society thus transforming them into social innovators throughout the program. We have already developed and tested a multi-faceted offline program which includes seasonal camps, hackathons, etc. We believe that the future of education will rely more on dynamic digital tools, this is why we are in the process of developing an online platform with Arabic language capabilities which will enable anyone in the Arab world to access this educational program to make a real change in the society. Core problem The Arab world is facing many problems including the refugee/displacement crisis, waste management problems, environmental issues, scarcity of water resources, difficult economic conditions, unemployment, etc. Believed to be a catalyst of development, entrepreneurship is gaining a lot of attention from policy makers, the private sector, and academic institutions in the Arab world. However, most entrepreneurship supporting efforts, influenced by the Silicon Valley, emphasize the importance of building high-growth, scalable, and highly profitable technological businesses and describe the entrepreneurial journey to be the path to become a billionaire. Thus, many young people understand entrepreneurship as being the next Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg and rarely think of it as a tool to change the world positively and find solutions to eminent problems that they are facing. Proposed solution As the youth on the platform will learn how to approach social challenges and will come up with ideas for these challenges and then learn how to develop the technology for these ideas and how to turn their idea into a real business, we will be helping through Shabab Lab to not only provide high quality education but most importantly to actually solve many of the problems pertaining to the 2030 SDG's through the projects that will be developed thanks to our online social innovation program. The best of teams will compete in a regional competition to make sure that they pursue their ideas beyond the online course.

Information

Startup Name
Riyada for Social Innovation S.A.L.
Category
Content
Country
Lebanon
Number of Employees
0-10

Links

OTV #TechTales sponsored by Touch Lebanon to talk about our #EdTech startup Riyada for Social Innovation SAL and e-learning platform under the making #ShababLab
App Screenshots