By Usha Wagle Gautam
After a successful tenure as Head of Safety and Loss Prevention in Qatar General Water and Electricity Corporation (Kahramaa), Essa al-Mannai joined Reach Out to Asia (Rota) as Senior Operations Manager in 2009, was promoted to Acting Director in mid-2010 and now serves as permanent Executive Director, responsible for continuing the strategic course set by Rota’s Board of Directors.
Essa al-Mannai graduated from Qatar University with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and received his masters in business administration from the Newcastle University (formerly, the University of Newcastle upon Tyne), UK.
Before joining Rota, al-Mannai’s volunteering and charity commitments included volunteer placements in Belize. He was awarded with ‘Best Volunteer’ award during West Asian Games 2005 held in Doha.
Since Al Mannai came to Rota, the organisation has taken a range of initiatives in Indonesia, Lebanon, Pakistan, Palestine and Nepal along with Qatar. Rota projects often include education leadership and teachers’ training, as well as sports, environment and skills development initiatives.
Rota recently collaborated with Al Waleed Foundation in rehabilitating 22 schools in Gaza. Rota has also signed a partnership with the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) as part of a strategic plan to integrate sports as a tool in education.
In Pakistan and Nepal, some 3,000 students benefit from a youth development programme through football. Among its many other initiatives, Rota has led adult literacy trainings, youth leadership programmes, and a competition for young writers in Beirut. Many teachers and students benefit from Rota’s Knowledge Network Trainings and workshops.
In an interview with Community, Essa al-Mannai talks about the mission of Rota, its achievements, ongoing projects and challenges while working in Nepal.
What are the core values of Rota behind its pioneering success and how did you get interested in the field?
I have been working with Rota for more than four years. It’s always a great privilege to work with an organisation that has a mission to provide people affected by crises in Asia and the Arab world with access to quality primary and secondary education. Supporting the access to quality education and community development has always been a priority of Rota and I’m blessed to be part of this wonderful team.
This is especially true since Rota’s work always aligns with the core values of commitment and passion, integrity and trust, empathy and respect, all of which is done with a focus on engaging local communities.
The purpose of our international education projects is to help raise awareness and funds for children in Palestine, Yemen, Pakistan and Nepal as well as Syrian refugees in Lebanon.
We want to be able to secure a better future and provide hope to these children at risk. Together with our esteemed international partners, and our supportive community, we hope we will once again make a difference to disadvantaged communities in all of our neighbouring countries.
Rota is running its programmes in Nepal among other Asian countries. What interests Rota the most about the Himalayan Shangri-La?
We do have two projects running in Nepal. The first one is a partnership with Swiss Academy for Development (SAD) and Dalit Welfare Association (DWA) to improve the access of education for out-of-school children from marginalised communities. Overarching objective of this project “Move 4 New Horizons — A holistic educational approach for disadvantaged children and youth in Nepal” is to provide marginalised children and youths of 10 Village Development Committees (VDCs) in Dang district with access to basic education and job opportunities through enhanced and replicable Early Childhood Development (ECD), Non-Formal Education (NFE) and Vocational Training (VT) programmes.
We partner Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Rural Education and Development (READ) in our second project aimed to improve access of marginalised communities to education. This project is running in Terai plains of the country and is called “Expanding Educational and Livelihood Resources in the Terai, with a Specific Focus on ICT and Youth”.
The objectives of this project are to provide access to educational resources, information technologies and livelihoods to over 100, 000 people in Terai through establishment and upgrade of 11 READ Centers across the four districts, to improve job opportunities for 3000 youths through provisions of life skill trainings, sports clubs, academic and career support and health awareness, to provide in-depth vocational training to at least 100 young people and to create more sustainable and impactful information and computer technologies (ICT) facilities through deployment of lower energy consumption hardware and alternative energy sources.
What are the challenges and opportunities in working with Nepal’s education sector?
Nepal is lagging far behind in providing quality education as compared to its South Asian neighbours. Although there have been some improvements in primary education, even now, nearly 12.6 percent of Nepalese children do not receive primary education. Nepalese children who are not included in primary education mainstream are from the most disadvantaged, Dalits, Madhesis and indigenous communities.
The challenges in Nepal’s’ formal education sector can be generalised as shortage of qualified and competent teachers, lack of adequate teaching materials in local and rural areas, weak interface in between schools and ministries, poor and inadequate infrastructures, lack of policy implementation and discriminations based on caste, ethnicity and gender.
Programmatic opportunities that Rota focuses in Nepal are to ensure access to quality education, integrate the use of sports in skill development, ensure equity in programming and engage with other stakeholders and local bodies like District Education Office (DEO), local schools, NGOs and INGOs among others. We are developing non-formal education opportunities along with sports and other skill development programmes to enroll and retain drop-outs. We are also focused to include girls and children from marginalised communities into education.
How do you see Nepal and its people in the context of philanthropic activities run by Rota?
Nepal is an extremely diverse nation. There are 103 distinct ethnic and caste groups and 125 documented languages including six major languages widely spoken by most of its population. It’s a multiethnic and multilingual country with variations in geographical locations. Yet, we are constantly inspired by the communities we serve by the determination of these varied people to work together to create better conditions for their children.
What are Rota’s future projects in Nepal?
Rota will continue to implement the READ project till 2016 and the SAD project till December 2014. Meanwhile, we are currently holding discussions with potential donors to explore possibilities for future projects developing ‘green’ schools in Nepal and strengthening the Technical and Vocational Educational Training (TVET) system.
How is Rota helping to strengthen bilateral ties between Nepal and Qatar?
Rota’s mission is to extend its assistance into Asia and it has been very successful in achieving its goals through all of the above projects it is implementing in Nepal. Qatar’s strategic geographical location gives it a unique opportunity to support its neighbouring countries as they overcome developmental difficulties.
Nepal is among the poorest countries in the world and is currently, ranked at 157 out of 187 countries in UN Human Development Index (HDI). While Nepal has made significant progress in the recent decades, it continues to be gripped by political instability, poverty, food insecurity, illiteracy and social exclusion.
Rota’s educational projects in Nepal will surely help strengthening relations between Qatar and Nepal. Over 50,000 children will benefit from all the different projects aimed at improving the quality of educational facilities and resources and advocating innovative on-the-ground solutions.
I think Rota will take the bilateral relationship to the next level.
