JEDDAH: Mohammed Jameel, president of Abdul Latif Jameel Company, is among seven business leaders nominated for the Oslo Award, which is annually given to business leaders whose actions and commitments make an outstanding contribution to the promotion of ethical behavior and peace.
The seven were nominated by an award giving committee consisting of three Nobel laureates — professor Muhammad Yunus (2006), Wangari Muta Maathai (2004) and professor A. Michael Spence (2001).
The prize will be awarded to one of the nominees for the first time on May 14 in the City Hall of Oslo, said a press statement carried by Reuters.
“The Oslo Award came as a natural consequence of discussions and deliberations during the Oslo summits on peace through trade in 2007 and 2008,” said Per Saxegaard, who represents the Business for Peace Foundation in Oslo, the award’s initiator.
“It is important to inspire and encourage business persons to be conscious of the role they can play as individuals to foster stability and peace. This is an element that should be incorporated as a matter of course into corporate social responsibility,” said Nobel laureate Kofi Annan, former UN secretary-general and a key supporter of the award.
A great Saudi philanthropist and a respected businessman, Jameel has developed several community programs creating job opportunities for thousands of young Saudi men and women each year, the statement issued by the award committee said.
“Jameel has been the driving force behind the Grameen Jameel Pan Arab Initiative, which aims to reduce poverty through micro credit,” the statement added.
Jameel opened the Bab Rizq Jameel (BRJ) Center in June 2007 in Jeddah for creating employment opportunities for women and offering financial support for start-ups and loans for vocational training.
An initiative of Abdul Latif Jameel Community Services Programs, BRJ successfully created 3,493 jobs last March through its diversified job creation programs. During the same month, it financed 421 small projects giving an average of SR45,000 for each project.
Through taxi and truck ownership programs, BRJ provided 79 cars and 78 trucks to young Saudis. In addition, 1,812 women received microfinance through the productive household program. It has opened two women’s centers in Makkah and Jeddah.
Other Oslo Award nominees are Swedish Anders Dahlvig, CEO of IKEA, Mohamed Ibrahim, a Sudanese born British mobile communications entrepreneur, American Jeffrey R. Immelt, chairman and CEO of General Electric, Josephine Okot (Uganda), the founder and managing director of Victoria Seeds, a full line seed company in Uganda, Jiang Jianqing, head of the Investment and Commercial Bank of China, and Zhengrong Shi (China), a solar scientist.
In a statement on the occasion, Yunus said, “The only way out of poverty is through ethical business practice. Politicians cannot solve the problems deriving from poverty in a vacuum.”
The award ceremony will be held on May 14 in the City Hall in the same surroundings as the Nobel Peace Prize as the high event of the annual Oslo Summit on Peace through Trade.
