LONDON: Tributes were this week paid to the late Soraya Salti — a regular at the World Economic Forum in Davos — following an awards ceremony in Dubai held in her honor.
“Soraya Salti was at the forefront of fostering Arab youth and encouraging sustainable development across MENA,” said Mazen Hayek, the spokesman of MBC group which oversees the memorial Soraya Al-Salti Scholarship Program award.
Soraya and her sister Jumana were in 2015 found dead in suspicious circumstances in a building to the south of the Jordanian capital Amman. Police later declared that the deaths were a double suicide.
Soraya was a passionate businesswoman and activist, and headed the INJAZ Al-Arab organization, which has helped teach financial literacy and entrepreneurship skills to than 2 million young people across the Middle East.
During her illustrious career, Salti emerged as one of the Middle East’s strongest and most articulate voices calling for education reform.
Deeply concerned by rising underemployment across the Middle East, Salti scuttled between conferences, board rooms and ministries of education, exhorting leaders and executives to invest in Arab youth by teaching skills relevant to today’s job market.
She was selected to join the World Economic Forum’s prestigious Young Global Leaders program, which counts Facebook founder Mark Zuckerburg and journalist Anderson Cooper as alums.
Regularly appearing on panels and plenary sessions at Davos over the years, Salti linked outdated curricula and archaic teaching models across the Arab world to joblessness, stagnated growth and youth unrest. “The bottom line is that education is an economic issue,” she said in a 2012 interview.
Her legacy was celebrated this week when MBC Al Amal, the media company’s charitable arm, named the first beneficiaries of Soraya Al-Salti Scholarship Program.
Five female students hailing from across the Middle East were selected from a pool of more than one thousand applicants to receive the $100,000 grant, which offers full and partial scholarships for Arab women looking to pursue masters programs.
The winners included Irene Baghdadi (Egypt) — Sustainable Development; Khadija Radwan (Egypt) — Design and Project Management; Lynn Sharbatly (KSA) — Law; Mayada Sabry (Jordan) — Communication Disorders; Mariam Al-Nahrawi (Egypt) — Geological Sciences.
Speaking to Arab News about the importance of empowering youth to resolve the region’s problems and drive development, Hayek said: “With an overwhelmingly young population — nearly 60 percent under 30 across the MENA region, we’re either sitting on a source of immense wealth, or a time bomb.”
For Salti, however, there was no question. Unwavering in her belief that young people were the region’s most valuable resource, she launched partnerships the world’s biggest companies to promote a new business-savvy generation equipped to participate in the global economy.
Confident and compelling, Salti was able to convince executives and world leaders alike that Arab youth were a worthy, even necessary, investment. Her work even drew the attention of then US President Barack Obama: “We have people like Soraya Salti of Jordan, who are empowering the young men and women who will be leaders of tomorrow,” he said at a summit for entrepreneurship in 2010.
Described by a Harvard professor after her passing as a “remarkable force for change” possessing “consistent optimism and a bright smile,” Salti elevated the voice of Arab youth to the world stage and took their ideas seriously.
“Soraya’s role was instrumental in helping Arab startups, entrepreneurs and SMEs flourish and grow,” Hayek said.
