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Saudi Arabia Just Hosted Its First Global Female Scouts Event

Held online and over amateur radio, the event provides a fun and educational scouting experience

Saudi Arabia’s first female Scouts JOTA-JOTI event, the world’s largest annual digital Scout happening, bought together scouts from 172 countries. International charitable organisation Alwaleed Philanthropies and Riyadh’s Princess Nourah Bint Abdulrahman University (PNU), the world’s largest women’s university, teamed up with World Scouting for the exciting event that took place from 15-17 October. By Joining forces with the body behind the leading educational youth movement that engages millions of young people to be active citizens and create positive change in their communities, the two Saudi establishments aimed to empower the next generation of young female leaders. Inspiring young Saudi girls to become active and engaged citizens is also part of a push to help achieve the Kingdom’s ambitions of getting one million individuals to volunteer per year.

This year’s JOTA-JOTI event was held in full support of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with the PNU female scouts’ involvement having created particular alignment with SDG 5: gender equality. The local event was livestreamed on the third day at PNU and featured a dynamic programme. This included a live show that was streamed with 100 Scouts and 20 mentors from the university, along with non-formal education activities and global webinars. World Scouting’s global partners were actively involved in the event, offering their expertise and fun activities to engage participants.

“Young people are the largest generation of youth in history and investing in them is key to making them great agents of change. They have creative answers to the challenges that will define the future of our economy, environment and society,” HRH Princess Lamia bint Majed Saud Al Saud, Secretary General of Alwaleed Philanthropies, said. “Alwaleed Philanthropies is honoured to have joined forces with Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University and World Scouting to mobilise youth to advance the SDGs, effectively improving the lives of people in Saudi Arabia and beyond.”

Held every year in October on the Internet and over the airwaves, JOTA-JOTI connects millions of young people around the world over online activities that promote friendship and global citizenship. The event enables and encourages scouts everywhere to communicate with one another by means of amateur radio and the Internet, providing a fun and educational scouting experience and promoting their sense of belonging to a worldwide scout movement. The programme aims to support scouts and others of all ages to learn about communications technology, the values of global citizenship and how together youth can solve the most pressing challenges facing our planet with a focus on developing 21st century skills through scouting.

The JOTA-JOTI livestream from PNU marked the first event that has come to fruition following the partnership agreement between Alwaleed Philanthropies and World Scouting. The agreement is the first in the Kingdom to build structured scout groups in Saudi universities to support women and youth involvement in scouting locally and internationally and encourage greater participation in community volunteering within the higher education sector. It aims to align volunteering programmes in Saudi universities with World Scouting’s framework and prepare students to participate in non-profit development projects. 

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