Kuwait keen on empowering youth in media: PAY chief
‘Youth help alter stereotype about Arabs’
CAIRO: Kuwait is keen on supporting and empowering youth in the media scene, encouraging them to enter the field provided with ethics of the profession, to offer creative and innovative ideas, Director General of the Public Authority for Youth (PAY) Abdulrahman Al-Mutairi said. Mutairi made the statement at the 6th Arab Media Forum for Youth held in Cairo yesterday under the theme ‘Youth vision for future of media,’ patronized by the Arab League Secretary General Ahmad Abul-Gheit.
The Arab world is experiencing a quantum shift and a state of a stunning and swift progress in media and communication, Mutairi said. This has given media undeniable power and influence, he stressed. Youth are the pioneers, and the “pillars and take-off point” of this stage for achieving sustainable development, through overall rational policies that focus on enhancing their efficiencies to occupy leading posts, Mutairi said. He urged for “investing in the youth” who form about 70 percent of the Arab population, offering them the chance to unleash their capabilities and powers of creativity. Achieving a development boom and securing sustainable stability is possible if the governments set empowering youth a priority, Mutiair said. They can offer youth the chance to express themselves, as well as boosting their sense of belonging so that they can take part in building the future of their nations and their own. Young media figures are the future of the profession. They are “the basis, and we are their partners,” he concluded.
Stereotype
Meanwhile, a Kuwaiti official on Saturday underscored pivotal role of young Arab media personnel to portray a positive image about the nation at the global scene. Saleh Zaid AlOtaibi, the director of guidance at the State of Kuwait’s Ministry of Information, indicated that empowering the young Arab media personnel is necessary for rapid action aimed at altering the stereotypical image about the Arab nation on the international media arena.
Addressing the forum, Otaibi indicated that the new generation of Arab media personnel and journalists mastermind the modern language for effectively addressing nations of other civilizations and cultures. The official noted that Kuwait had hosted “the first social media conference” in December 2015, during which a large number of junior Arab journalists took part. As to the “Arab Media Forum,” launched in Kuwait in 2003, “it has turned into a bright Kuwaiti stamp in the field of joint Arab media action,” Otaibi said. He urged decision makers in the Arab media institutions to revise their strategies and make them more flexible and capable of absorbing modern-day innovations and concepts.
Elaborating, he underscored key role of the Kuwaiti media in boosting basic principles, such as loyalty to the homeland, tolerance, peace and moderation, in addition to renouncing hatred, extremism and terrorism in thought and action.
Preparations
In the meantime, a Kuwaiti official briefed participants in the forum about Kuwait’s preparations for organizing the festival ‘Kuwait Capital for Arab Youth’ due on May 15. Nasser Al-Erfej, Director of Public Relations and Information at the State of Kuwait Ministry of State for Youth Affairs, said that he informed his fellow conferees about the arrangements for the event, in which all Arab states would take part.
Idea of holding the event had been raised by the former Kuwaiti minister of information, Sheikh Salman Sabah Salem Al-Humoud AlSabah, during an Arab meeting. The event, in its first edition, was hosted by Manama in 2015 and was later held in Rabat in 2016. The planned festival will be under the title, “toward creative youth who advocate pioneering.” — KUNA