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Silatech founder and chairperson HH Sheikha Moza bint Nasser witnessed the signing of a number of Memorandums of Understanding (MoU) with its partners to support the Arab youth. HH Sheikha Moza also chaired the first meeting of the new Board of Trustees of Silatech at which Silatech’s annual performance 2016 and strategy and achievements report 2016 were presented. Silatech signed an agreement with QNB Africa to empower Youth in Sudan with Sama Al Shabab Portfolio. This way QNB Sudan will direct 12% of its portfolio towards financing youth enterprises. Another MoU to employ Tunisian youth was signed in order to create 50,000 jobs by 2020 and reduce migration of Tunisian competencies abroad. In another agreement, Silatech partnered with the World Congress for Muslim Philanthropists to develop the first innovative Micro-waqf platform to connect youth entrepreneurs with donors and investors.

Silatech, a Qatar-based social enterprise aiming to increase employment and entrepreneurship among youth in the Middle East and North Africa, recently announced the development of Narwi, a nonprofit crowdfunding platform that will support microentrepreneurs via Islamic charitable giving. The platform is scheduled to be launched in late June 2015. Through Narwi, donors will be able to establish an endowment called a “Narwi Waqf” to fund microentrepreneurs with donations as small as USD 25. Projects featured by Narwi are sourced solely from lenders in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Somalia and Yemen that are compliant with Shariah.

Qatar Charity CEO Mr. Yousef bin Ahmad Al-Kuwari and Silatech CEO Dr. Tarik M. Yousef signed an agreement committing the two organizations to work jointly to support young Arab entrepreneurs through Silatech’s Narwi micro-giving portal. The agreement follows the 2013 signing of a Memorandum of Understanding to cooperate in technology, fund-raising and technical assistance. “Narwi” (narwi.com) will allow visitors to the site to directly contribute toward financing the young Arab entrepreneur of their choice in countries including Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Yemen and Somalia. Funds on Narwi are given as revolving donations, so that when the entrepreneur repays the original loan, the donation moves on to support others as well.

16th October 13 - 8:00am to 17th October 2013 - 12:00pm
Hosted by the Fung Inst. & Silatech, this conference is the first chance for top thought leaders from the Middle East, Silicon Valley, the Venture Capital community & the academic community to spur innovation, create jobs & encourage entrepreneurship throughout the middle east.

The conference is being generously supported by a donation from Silatech, a Qatar based foundation focused on expanding economic opportunity and jobs in the Middle East. This leading institution is partnering with UC Berkeley to bring in some of the world's top experts in Middle Eastern Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Islamic Finance, Crowdfunding and Accelerators, to discuss the opportunities in the region to develop a thriving culture of entrepreneurship and innovation. This conference will bring together top experts from the region, scholars and venture capitalists and innovators from Silicon Valley to explore how we can work together to create economic opportunity through entrepreneurship in the Middle East.

For more information, please contact Richard Swart: rswart@berkeley.edu

? three-day Financial Literacy Training of Trainers course was organized and held by Silatech - a social enterprise aiming to to increase employment and entrepreneurship among youth in the Middle East and North Africa. 20 instructors from the Sudan Academy for Banking and Financial Sciences (SABFS) took part. After the training, they now can offer a four months long microfinance development program to approximately 1,000 credit officers in Sudan. The materials used in the training were developed by US-based Microfinance Opportunities.