Saudi Arabia: IDB to Honor Women Involved in Development Work

IDB to Honor Women Involved in Development Work

JEDDAH, 24 May 2006 — The Islamic Development Bank (IDB) has established an annual “Contribution of Women in Development” prize. The first woman to receive the honor will be awarded by the end of this month.

The award is to encourage the participation of women and to increase opportunities for them to make their contributions to society. The prize will be awarded to the highest achieving women, women groups or women organizations in IDB member countries or Muslim communities in non-member countries.

During the IDB’s 13th annual symposium titled “Women in poverty alleviation: better access to education and micro finance” held at Burkina Faso in 2002, a recommendation was made to establish an IDB Advisory Panel of Eminent Women for assisting the bank in promoting the role of women in poverty reduction and socio-economic development process. This was followed by the appointment of a dozen women members to the advisory panel. They met in Sharjah, UAE, in March 2005 and issued ten recommendations for the institution of the prize for women and for NGOs serving women.

“The panel is of experts who advise the bank on strategy on women work. We met for the first time in Sharjah to develop the criteria, the scoring and grading for the women nominees to the prize,” Saleha Abedin, one of the advisory panel members and director of general education, academic advancement and international institutional relations at Dar Al-Hekma College, told Arab News.

There were 150 nominations from the state members. For two weeks a group of ten professors met at Dar Al-Hekma to review the nominees and name the top five finalists.

The award will be presented to the winner during the annual meeting of the bank’s board of governors in Kuwait. Abedin would not name the winner, but hinted that the woman is the head of a Jordanian NGO.

There are two awards, one is for an individual or group of individuals; the prize is $50,000. The other prize, for $100,000, is for an NGO or women organization. The fields for 2006 awards in the two categories are: Women Entrepreneurs and Their Role in Sustainable Development, and the Role of Training and Advocacy Programs in Women’s Socio-Economic Development.

The graphic design department at Dar Al-Hekma was assigned to create and design the award and the trophy.

“The graphic designs students made 36 designs of the award, the IDB president then chose the design out of the top five,” said Abedin.

The students also designed the trophy and Sarah Al-Sabbagh, the student with the winning design, will be going to Kuwait to receive an award for her design.

---Arab News
Source: http://www.arabnews.com/?page=1§ion=0&article=82657&d=24&m=5&y=2006