Investing in Dubai's youth

Nour Al Harmoodi is an indefatigable 25-year old. She is an Emirati and works as a research analyst with the Dubai government’s youth office. With a degree in international marketing from the Hult International Business School in Boston, Nour has recently been entrusted with the responsibility of managing the Youth Hub in Dubai’s Emirates Towers that opened its doors last September. A brainchild of Shamma Al Mazrui, Minister of State for Youth Affairs, the Youth Hub is a place for Emirati youth (between the ages of 15 and 35) that helps them to connect with people, gives them the power to launch their ideas and makes them realise their potential.

Nour embodies certain trends of her generation – she is bursting with ideas, is not afraid to take on challenges or push the boundaries. She decided to come back to the UAE after her graduation to use her skills in her country. And like many in her generation, she does not stop at a day job. Besides managing the Youth Hub, she is a trained jiujitsu athlete, practicing the sport by night. ‘Jiujitsu,’ Nour says, “taught me the spiritual meaning of respect and honour. It taught me commitment, dedication and perseverance. It also taught me the simple equation of: you reap what you sow. It changed my life.’ She says it is very common for Emirati youth to secure a day job while practicing sports by night. ‘A day job is everyone’s safety net, mostly because it is hard to make a living being an athlete or a coach. I was a full-time athlete only a few months ago but I struggled to sustain myself. I now have a really cool job – I can proudly say I am a youth activator by day, and a jiujitsu athlete by night.’

There is something changing in the UAE. Its future is in the hands of its youth, who are now being seen and heard, more than ever before. They have a voice, they are grabbing the limelight, and they are ready to work hard.

Like Nour, there are many others who are adding a different persona to their image by working beyond their nine-to-five jobs, finding a creative space, and being fiercely independent. Twenty-four-year-old Aisha Abdulwahed Al Suwaidi is one of them. A day job as an architect and an entrepreneur outside her work hours, she uses the organic produce from her family’s farmhouse to create Emirati breakfast dishes at her start up, Aisha’s farmhouse. Or take Adel Galadari, a banker by day and a vintage sunglass dealer by night. Or Hesham Ismail and Rashid Almazrooei and their young team at the Futurists Hub who create robots and drones and fully-assembled 3D printers, all “made in the UAE”.

As the UAE takes up the challenges of the new world, emerging as the region’s most smart and progressive nation, it attaches great importance to the role of its youth and their empowerment. The UAE Vision 2021 requires the youth to shoulder responsibilities, innovate and contribute to the welfare of the community, and their skill, energy and enthusiasm are most valued as human capital.

The focus on youth power was reiterated last year in February when Shaikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, called on UAE universities to nominate three young men and three young women for the post of Minister of State for Youth Affairs. Eventually it was the 22-year-old Shamma Al Mazrui who was appointed as the Minister of State for Youth Affairs as well as the head of the Youth Council. Mazrui, with a Master’s degree from Oxford and a Bachelor of Science from New York University, perfectly represents the millennials and post-millennials of her country, who are well qualified, some educated overseas, with a keenness to work for the UAE and driven by a sense of patriotism.

Less than a year into her role as youth minister, Mazrui has stepped up the energy with the creation The Youth Hub, or Hub X, as UAE’s first youth centre is popularly called. It is now the perfect meeting ground for such fertile minds. Like Nour, it has other youth members who work behind the scene non-stop as the Hub’s activator, communicator, curator and designer to see that they scout the right talent, host workshops and training programmes for the youth and connect people willing to start up with the right support groups. “It all started with a tweet,” explains Nour.

The minister for state for youth affairs had tweeted last year that if there were to be a centre for youth in the UAE, what would it be like? ‘She was flooded with suggestions and opinions and everything you see in the Youth Hub came to reality from what was once part of a debate and discussion with Emirati youth across the country.’ The centre serves as a co-working space for the youth to meet and brainstorm ideas. It also hosts workshops, training sessions and masterclasses to empower the youth.

A survey by investment bank UBS last year highlighted that millennials in the UAE are more hard-working and entrepreneurial compared to their global peers. Ali Janoudi, Group Managing Director at UBS, said in an interview to the media, that the survey of UAE millennials showed “52 per cent of respondents never expected to retire, compared to 23 per cent globally, while 91 per cent had already started their own business or are likely to in the near future.”

Soukaina Ben Bihi, an activator at the Youth Hub, reiterates this when she says, “There is a strong interest in entrepreneurship. A lot of youth of our generation want to explore what it is to set up their own business, discover themselves and their passions. The interesting bit is the Hub doesn’t focus on any particular youth category. It’s not just entrepreneurs or artists but even high school students who come here to study after school, or work on projects. It’s their place away from home, and they come here to interact with each other. Many of them have worked on solo projects, while others have worked in teams creating new companies altogether.”

To help accelerate the ideas of the Arab youth, the Hub partners with organisations such as the MasterCard, Oracle, Google or even Dubai Culture, Emirates Literature Foundation and Taskeel to help in mentoring, coaching, leadership development and hands-on skills. ‘We find there is an interest in diverse areas,’ says Nour.

‘From green energy and sustainability to how to become an astronaut to Arabic calligraphy and vlogging, there is no limit to what interests the Arab youth. So on one hand we have the Mohammad Bin Rashid Space Centre teaching students to calculate the age of the sun, while on the other Google has been here launching their Maharat min Google (literally translating as skills from Google) to teach digital soft skills to high school students. Our partners provide these programmes free of cost and the number of partnership organisations have grown since we opened, now reaching almost 30,’ explains Soukaina.

The Youth Hub has been an incubator for many young people who have given shape to their creative ideas simply by using the space or meeting like-minded individuals.

Take Ahmed Al Aydarous, for example, the 20-year-old Emirati clay animator whose artistic ambitions made him the first claymation artist from the UAE. Al Aydarous was first featured in a film by Fayssal Bensahli, called Made of Clay when he was 17. He has, thereafter, been a regular visitor to the Hub, using its studio to create his videos that he would have otherwise made at home. ‘Any retention rate is a success story for us. Any youth who finds meaning and has benefited from using the space means we have been able to help in some way,’ says Soukaina.

Space has been creatively planned in the Hub. Be it the Pod (or the private cubicles), the Launchpad (a space that can be used by start-ups, like Aisha’s Farmhouse, to launch their products) or the Canvas (for creative minds) or meeting rooms such as the Field and the Hive, the whole area uses space functionally according to the needs of its members who frequent it.

Since it opened its doors last year the Hub has also seen a young group of Emirati professionals in various technical fields, particularly robotics, virtual reality, artificial intelligence and 3D printing, getting together to brainstorm and finally creating their own company, the Futurists Hub. ‘Our aim has been to produce fully developed UAE products,’ says the 31-year-old Hesham Ismail, a research and robotics specialist.

‘We met most of our team members here. Each of us are an expert in a particular field, be it drones or cyber security or IT and the idea was to provide integrated services, develop the latest technologies, and create 100 per cent UAE products. We started by giving workshops at the Hub on these cutting-edge technologies. This created an awareness and we had students as well as members from Dubai and Sharjah municipalities, from the health sectors attending. That’s how people got to know us.’

The robotics team at the Futurists Hub has created two robots – the Humat Al Bawasel (the protector of the soldier) that can be used to retrieve a wounded soldier in a war and Mudahm, a robot that is used to explore a confined toxic space where humans cannot enter. ‘We have also designed five fully assembled customised drones and the first fully assembled UAE-made 3D printer that can print spare parts for utility companies at very high speed. For children we have an Arabic alphabet book that uses augmented reality to teach kids the different alphabets. We started with eight members, now we have almost 15, with the average age being below 30,’ says Ismail.

Also educated in the US, Ismail came back to work in the area of robotics and wants to mentor the next generation of programmers in the country. ‘In the US there are a lot of people working in the area of robotics. Here in the UAE the number is limited, so it’s important to mentor the youth in this field. In the next 20 years there will be jobs in the area of programming. It’s very important to mentor the next generation,’ he says.

The annual Asdaa Burson Marsteller Arab Youth Survey of 2017 had offered a unique insight into the attitudes and aspirations of the region’s biggest demographic, and one of the interesting finds in the survey was that the UAE remains the top country Arab youth want to live in and want their children to emulate. Call it patriotism, or simply the wish to give back to their society, the young are now more motivated to go local.

‘I always had a passion for cooking,’ says Aisha Abdulwahed Al Suwaidi. ‘So even though I work in Dewa as an architect, I wanted to do something with the produce at my dad’s farm at Al Madan in Sharjah. We grow a lot of zucchini, broccoli, rosemary, tomatoes, rocket and coriander leaves and the idea to start a place that served traditional Emirati food, cooked fresh from organic produce, came almost naturally. I wanted to bring back the love for Emirati cuisine that is a little lost in our generation in a much healthier form,’ says Aisha.

Aisha’s farmhouse started at the Ripe Market in Dubai in October 2017 and, ‘then out of the blue, I got a call from the team at the youth ministry asking me whether I would like have my outlet at the Hub’s Launch Pad for a few months,’ she says. This was a huge opportunity for the young Aisha. ‘It just changed a lot of things for me. I got a space at such an important venue, I learnt how to operate a business, deal with customers and their complaints, and interact with many public figures. Honestly, it has been an opportunity of a lifetime.’

Her plans for the future includes developing her recipes, scout around for a more permanent location, master the marketing skills and build on the brand. ‘You’ll find me on Instagram now, a website is in the works,’ she explains as she tries her best to divide her time between her day job and her start up. ‘It’s not easy. I try to be there as much as my job allows me, and when I am not there, my cousin is.’

Like Aisha, 30-year-old Adel Galadari is a banker by day, but his real passion lies in collecting vintage sunglasses. Growing up, the young Adel was fascinated by Shaikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the UAE’s Founding Father, and took a special interest in the sunglasses he wore. ‘My friend and now partner Ahmad Al Aqili and I use to challenge each other to identify the glasses Shaikh Zayed wore and from that the interest went on to the other members of the royal family and international celebrities till it became a raging passion. Today you can show me the picture of a celebrity and I can tell you the make and model of his sunglass.’

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Adel interacts with his customers through his Instagram page and is looking forward to opening a new store. ‘I want to meet people, and give more time to the business explaining the story behind each sunglass – its history. That’s my passion.’

Our generation is very restless, explains Aisha Al Suwaidi. ‘We want to do different things, whether it is setting up cafes, opening restaurants, starting a fashion chain. There is a lot of energy, and we want to be part of Dubai’s progress. We want to be part of the movement.’ Shaikh Mohammad once said that ‘Dreams begin with ideas, a word, an image or even a postage stamp.’

As this generation works on to fulfill its dreams, a new reality shapes the UAE.