KAFD reaches two-decade milestone in empowerment

DEAD SEA — The King Abdullah II Fund for Development (KAFD) on Monday celebrated its 20th anniversary at the King Hussein Bin Talal Convention Centre at the Dead Sea under the slogan “A King’s Vision”.

As a response to the directions of His Majesty King Abdullah, KAFD was founded to promote the country’s sustainable development, seeking through its partnership with both public and private sectors to implement development projects and hotspots, especially in the areas that suffer the most from poverty and unemployment, according to its website.

The celebration included a visual presentation, which shed light on the fund’s journey since its establishment in 2001. The event highlighted KAFD’s programmes and achievements over the years, with a number of beneficiaries showcasing their projects that were supported by the fund.

According to KAFD, it provided 2,65,000 direct and indirect opportunities in the areas of training, volunteering, capacity building, as well as financial, technical and logistical support over the years, along with 132,392 direct and indirect employability opportunities.

Since KAFD’s establishment, it has worked on translating the Royal vision, which “revolves around the Jordanian people and their development in all fields, educationally, economically, socially and politically,” KAFD Director Saeb Al Hasan told The Jordan Times during an interview.

Hasan indicated that KAFD aims to focus on initiatives concerned with enhancing the capabilities of citizens and youth, providing them with the necessary skills to enable them to join the labour market, as well as supporting entrepreneurs and innovators among them in various sectors.

“KAFD also contributes to establishing pioneering entrepreneurial and development projects and companies all around the Kingdom, in which we aim to target promising economic sectors. We also encourage the private sector to invest in less fortunate areas to generate job opportunities for its people and youth to improve the local community’s standard of living,” Hasan said.

In line with the new political reforms in the Kingdom, the fund implemented a youth-focused strategy to enable them to contribute to the modernisation process, Hasan said.

KAFD is currently implementing the “Parliamentary Fellowship Project and the Media Education Project”, with the aim of empowering Jordanian youth in parliamentary work and enhancing their role in raising awareness and countering false information and news, he noted.

“Within the Parliamentary Fellowship Project, there are 79 young Jordanian men and women who assist the House of Representatives in the current parliamentary session. They were selected competitively and trained theoretically and practically. Their role is to assist the lawmakers in preparing policy papers and political coordination among other tasks,” Hasan explained.

Hasan noted that all KAFD’s projects resumed online during the pandemic, even competitions and challenges, “Through our volunteers in the All Jordan Youth Commission [AJYC], we were able to play a major role in assisting the Kingdom in its efforts to maintain physical distancing measures after reopening the sectors and during lockdown period as well,” he said.

He highlighted that AJYC’s volunteers worked to deliver medications to families in need during lockdowns. The fund also provided more than 4,000 volunteers to help during the General Secondary Education Certificate Examination  (Tawjihi) in organising students’ entry to exam halls.

During the parliamentary elections, there were 12,000 young people at the polling stations to guide citizens and ensure physical distancing measures. 

Also, there were more than 1,300 young volunteers at the COVID-19 vaccination centres, some of whom were also trained to give the vaccine, according to Hasan.

One of KAFD’s beneficiaries, Abdullah Al Fares, CEO and Co-Founder of TakalmTech, a health-tech startup specialising in hearing and speech aid devices and software, indicated that they have  benefitted from the fund since June 2020.

“Oasis500, which is part of KAFD, invested in our project, which helped us immensely in speeding up the process of developing the anti-stuttering device and testing it on a larger number of people,” Fares told The Jordan Times during an interview.

He noted that they have contributed to “changing the lives” of more than 100 people using the device in Jordan and in more than 10 countries around the world.