KSU to help orphans in Yemen - Arab News
Published: Feb 17, 2012 00:36 Updated: Feb 17, 2012 00:36
RIYADH: King Saud University (KSU) has launched a major initiative to support thousands of orphans in Yemen, whose social and financial conditions have worsened following the uprisings in the country.
"The university has announced plans to train young Yemeni orphans in beekeeping and honey production," said Hamid Ziad, the chief of Yemen’s Orphans Development Foundation (ODF) who is currently visiting the Kingdom with a delegation.
"The Yemeni delegation visited Riyadh-based KSU and interacted with the faculty, who operate a major KSU Chair for Bee Research to learn more about the specialty with which ODF can develop life skills programs for more than 14,000 orphans below 16," said Ziad. The move is significant keeping in view the large number of helpless women and children, especially orphans, who have been rendered homeless following the unrest in the country.
The Kingdom and its institutions, he said, had extended all kinds of political and financial support to Yemen since the beginning of the unrest. Many Saudi aid organizations as well as other Arab philanthropic institutions have come forward to extend all help to orphans, whose number currently exceeds 400,000. The ODF, led by its secretary-seneral Ziad, rehabilitates and trains orphan teens to master the technology and skills needed for the job market, with the goal of achieving self-sufficiency.
The Yemeni government has also launched some programs with focus on providing orphans opportunities to develop marketable skills. The Kingdom, Ziad said, has been at the forefront of providing financial support and rehabilitating orphans. To this end, he noted the late Crown Prince Sultan funded the marriages of 3,200 Yemeni orphans in what was being described as the largest mass-wedding in the region in 2010.
The event was "unique and unprecedented," said Ziad, whose charity establishment organized the ceremony at the time.
Referring to the KSU-ODF tie-up, Ahmad Al-Kazim, supervisor of the KSU’s chair for Bee Research, said that they would provide all technical know-how. The chair, he said, has launched a training program for needy families in Saudi Arabia’s Qelwah district in Al-Baha Province. He pointed out Yemen’s climate is conducive to beekeeping. He welcomed the ODF’s decision to establish ties with his chair, emphasizing beekeeping’s great potential for mitigating poverty and the economic returns it offers to needy families and individuals.
He said that in addition to honey, bees produce a host of different marketable products such as beeswax, pollinated seeds, bee toxins and bee glue. Al-Khazim, along with his researchers, faculty and staff, gave the ODF visitors a tour of their facilities, showing them their equipment and laboratories and explaining their functions. Before the ODF delegation left, an agreement was made where the chair will play a role in training, rehabilitating and supervising orphans in both Saudi Arabia and Yemen.
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