Discovery

I just came back from the round table with the different NGOs operating in Oman.

The round table was held at the American Embassy in Muscat, by the Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI).

Mr. US Ambassador, opening the event, was very happy about the work that all organisations are doing in Oman, and we all were very grateful for such opportunity to meet and share what we do as well:)

MEPI supported the initial establishment of AIESEC in Oman in the country, and now we applied for another grant for the CSR project with them. So all organisations that also applied for the grants or thinking of applying, were present at the round table.

It was really interesting to get-to-know more about the social sector in this country.

There are about 250 not-for-profit organisations registered in Oman, however only 8 of them were participating in the MEPI event. This means that all other ones either have just the name and not really active, or not interested in the grants which is strange considering that citizens sector always need funding. There are mainly women associations, organisations dealing with disabled people and organisations working with children.

Social sector is very young here, and many people are not familiar with the concept of serving society. This country (and the Gulf in general) is very different from the rest of their neighbours in this sense, even North African countries. General “richness” of the society does not stimulate the thought of volunteering.

The challenges that NGOs face in Oman are quite similar to many other countries, at least what I have seen in Russia, Pakistan etc.: lack of funding, low attention from the government, low cooperation with corporate sector and with each other.

Tawasul, local think tank in Oman and the AIESEC partner, ran “Civil Society Award” campaign, for the first time in the country. AIESEC was also nominated for the award, but this is not the main point. It is good to see that the concept is getting out to the community.

However, sitting at the round table and listening to the financial challenges of the organisations, I realised that the concept of NGOs is already a little outdated. The idea of social businesses which generate income from their own products and therefore do not require donations, is much more sustainable. But for the country like Oman it is still a long way to go.

From the corporate side, luckily, things seem to be moving on, and if we look at the initiatives of some corporate organisations, many of them are running social responsibility projects investing in the society. They are still small and in most of cases stay a bit aside of organisational core work and strategy. We notice the biggest oil company in the country is investing money in supporting camels. Or a bunch of employees of a telecommunications company go to clean the beach. Good initiatives, but little connection with the strategy and meaning.

This is one of the reasons that in AIESEC we came up with the CSR project idea where we want to create the network of corporate, non-corporate and government organisations in order to influence CSR policies in companies in a way that they become more strategic and long-term oriented. We are planning to send Omani students abroad and get international interns in the country, then collect their research and create CSR manual that could be used by companies and the government.

Hopefully this project will be approved and we can start making positive change!

Anyways, all this is very exciting and I keep exploring the reality of Oman in different fields every day.