UPBEAT: Mark Thomson says the InterNations community in Doha has over 30,000 members and growing.     Photo by Umer Nangiana

By Umer Nangiana


Coming from a family open to culture, religion and language, he was brought up as a citizen of the world. He began globe-trotting at the young age of 18 and landed in Qatar about five years ago after travelling to — and living in — 13 countries.
Motivated by his longing for social interactions, he has managed to put more than 30, 000 people from 54 nationalities living in Doha in contact with each other and the number is growing. Mark Thomson, a British expatriate, joined the global expatriate community network of InterNations and made it one of the biggest and the most vibrant in Qatar.
Today, he is the InterNations Ambassador, Doha Community and a driving force behind its multiple activity clubs besides social development initiatives. Putting his tried and tested ability to motivate people with excellent leadership skills, Thomson has a knack for getting people to rally around a social cause or community initiative.
He has successfully organised mass campaigns by involving expatriate in constructing activities, contributing towards the social and cultural development of the country besides portraying a positive image of Qatar to the outside world through online community networking.   
“A big part of what we do and what I have been encouraging others to do, over the years, is answering questions on the public forums for people before they even come here. That helps them set expectations,” Thomson tells Community as we chat over coffee at one of his favourite cafes at a local five-star hotel here.
Acknowledging that people stereotype Middle East, Arabia and the Muslim world a lot and carry pre-conceived notions, Thomson says the InterNations Doha’s presence on the social media has encouraged people to come to Qatar and they are rapidly growing.
“We played an active role online to advocate this country’s strategy, religion and culture. The best thing to do once you are here is to look for expatriates from your own country and to find out how you can reach them,” says the InterNations Doha Ambassador, adding the network tries to put different nationalities of people together as the main doctrine is “Internations.”
The idea is togetherness which allows one to have friends from all over the world. When you are a member of InterNations, you are a member all over the world. You can attend its event even on holidays in London, for instance. It gives you access to people all over the world, both online and offline.
“It is not Facebook. The online part of it is only a vehicle to facilitate the offline, face-to-face interactions. We have many groups formed by members with common interests and combines people from multiple nationalities. It is really an enriching experience for expatriates,” say Thomson.
InterNations, the network which exists in many countries around the world, was created by Malte Zeeck from Germany who was an expat himself at some stage of his life. Through his own experience, he had realised the need for a platform for expats around the world to get together and actively interact and socialise. Today, InterNations is in over 300 cities.
Thomson says he took over the Doha chapter in early 2010 at a time when it was very small. Then it grew virally and now it has gone very big. At the network, they appoint volunteers to do active community work and, and Thomson says, he loves it.
“I love working in the community initiatives. Over the last few years, we have carried out multiple initiatives in this country. With the endorsement of the Qatar government and help from Ministry of Municipality and Urban Planning, we took 300 people to Umm Qais and cleaned the beach for a whole day, repeating the exercise for Al Zubara historical site with 200 people again,” says Thomson.
“We did the ice bucket challenge which was probably the biggest in the world. We did not get Guinness to come and record it but we had 560 people at the Grand Hyatt beach donating for the children of Gaza and ALS jointly,” says the leader of the community’s Doha chapter, adding that as the network is growing rapidly, they are able to actively participate in good national initiatives.
Although it is a volunteer’s job, Thomson says, it is really demanding in terms of time and effort. To attract members to start with, he had started holding social events at all the major hotels. And then it spread through word of mouth.
Initially, they started with one event a month. Now, they are having four a month. On top of that, they have started small specialised activity groups, as per tradition of InterNations.
People interested in having dinner together are in dining groups, people who are interested to get together for tennis, bowling, shooting and other sports have formed their own groups, there is a book club and Thomson says there are even groups for particular nationalities.
The InterNations Doha leader often organises activities in collaboration with other organisations for the larger benefit of community and says whenever he puts one initiative up, the InterNations community responds swiftly.
“We are always ready for any social initiative; the difficulty is we cannot find enough organisations to work with. We have tried to engage the charity or community groups, but the response frankly has been quite weak,” says Thomson.
He says the community network is constantly contributing to Qatar’s national vision by allowing people to learn and improve their skills through multiple professional trainings and workshops he holds for professionals through one of the specialised groups.
Thomson had arrived in Qatar at a time when the country was just starting its national plan and the long-term vision. The rapid development excited him and he has been part of many projects with the Qatar government to contribute his share to it.
“And this is what I love. I love people and cultures and I love discovering about different life patterns of people and, for a living, I am an advisor on custom service operations, change management and strategy,” says Thomson, adding that he has worked, for the past five years in Qatar, for government with incredible leadership such as Ashghal and Ministry of Municipal and Urban Planning as an advisor.
“I absolutely love my job. I came here from Dubai where I was also working for government. I worked there for about seven years on national programmes and on modernising the public transport and taxi network and the metro and other projects,” he elaborates.
In his 40s, Thomson is physical fit and loves hitting the gym regularly, lifting heavy weights. He believes in spreading positivity and advocates good citizenship. When you land in a country, he believes, you become a citizen of that country even if you do not have its passport. You have the same obligations, duties and then rights as that of a citizen.
“And I believe a country can advance when it embraces everyone living in it and when everyone living in it embraces that culture, participates actively in its social life and gets to know the way of its life. I absolutely fell in love with Qatar and its people and as soon as I came here,” says Thomson.
That was when he first realised that he needed to encourage fellow expats to do the same and he discovered InterNations and invited them all to it. 



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