Bid to let those less fortunate try their hand at enterprise

Hussain Al Nowais, the chairman of the Khalifa Fund, says it plans to finance about 100 new entrepreneurial projects this year. Sammy Dallal / The National

Academic dropouts, social welfare recipients and former prison inmates are among a pool of underserved UAE nationals who are being groomed to become budding entrepreneurs and small-business owners.

The Khalifa Fund for Enterprise Development, which has provided almost Dh650 million in financial support since it launched five years ago, has been testing various "social entrepreneurship" programmes.

These have already been used to train more than 380 residents of Abu Dhabi to tackle entrepreneurial activities and are now rolling out or being considered for expansion across all of the emirates.

"There are people who may not have gone to business school, may not know about accounting, who may not know about marketing - in fact, they can hardly read and write," said Hussain Al Nowais, the chairman of the Khalifa Fund. "Yet they are talented, with skill sets - be it in embroidery, cooking, fishery [or as] farmers."

Some women who live in rural areas and are either widowed or divorced have increased their income from Dh2,000 to Dh3,000 in monthly welfare support to between Dh20,000 and Dh30,000 by selling their handicrafts or home-cooked meals through catering businesses.

In a separate initiative, five prison inmates were assessed for their interests and provided with welding or joinery training during the last part of their jail terms - then given financial support specifically to buy machinery and rent out shop space.

"God forgive, people make mistakes, so we as a society try to forgive them and support them - otherwise they'll go back [to prison]," Mr Al Nowais said.

"The objective of all these initiatives is you have a sustainable monthly income to all these people. The Government is not burdened with social welfare … [and people create] a business they like, so they can develop themselves."

The programme for prisoners, which is being run in collaboration with the Abu Dhabi Police and the Ministry of Interior, is still in a pilot phase but may expand throughout the country, Mr Al Nowais said. Other initiatives aimed at UAE nationals who are academic dropouts or unemployed are now rolling out to emirates beyond Abu Dhabi.

Overall, the Khalifa Fund plans to fund about 100 new entrepreneurial projects this year across all of its programmes, although no set amount of funding has been allocated for the social entrepreneurship initiatives.

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