Ooreedoo starts leadership training programme

Muscat: Telecom company Ooreedoo announced the start of its new development programme, entitled ‘Spring Forward’, on Wednesday.
The announcement was made in the presence of the undersecretary of the ministry of civil service for administrative affairs and development, Sayyid Salim Musalim Al Busaidi.
Department head of the special project and the lone Spring Forward trainer, Ayesha Al Shaily, expressed pleasure at the prospect of beginning her work with new participants in this leadership training programme.
“When I started out eight years ago with this programme, for the purpose of empowerment of women, I had seven participants in the room with me. But slowly the number of participants grew over the years and now we have 80, and I hope to have anywhere from 100 to 150 soon, in the future, God willing.
“We even have people to sponsor some of the past business ideas that were proposed from this campaign. The graduation ceremony for this three-month course will be in December,” she said. Ooreedoo CEO Ian Dench said that he had been very impressed with the variety of business ideas that had been developed in the past.
“There’s such a wonderful diversity of ideas, when it comes to this programme. For instance, we’ve had apps dealing with fashion, pharma, real estate and even geology. One idea had to do with traditional crafts, and that came from a team in Ibra.
“The geology app was interesting, because Oman has all these ancient rocks in the country, and if a geologist wanted to come here and study them, they could make use of this app to locate which kind of rock formations can be found where. The idea of the programme is to unlock the entrepreneurial spirit in young Omanis,” he said.
Shaily said that the programme would require participants to be in touch with her through WhatsApp groups, adding that her mentorship and the idea of cultivating these young minds was in keeping with the vision of Corporate Social Responsibility of Ooreedoo.
“We had this real estate app, called I-Build. It received sponsorship and is now a proper business idea. Hopefully, people associated with these success stories will remember Ooreedoo for years to come”, said Shaily.
Dench added, “We want our customers to enjoy the internet, and we also want entrepreneurs to prosper from the internet. Our commitment is to contribute to the growth and development of Oman’s economy by nurturing the country’s talent and supporting digital business. Through this program, we are providing opportunities which will empower and develop the younger generation. Open to men and women across all sectors, Spring Forward is all about Oman’s future leaders.”