BPWA's Executive Director, who has an MBA from the University of Jordan, and who runs the organization and trainings for the underprivileged women to get skills training in starting businesses and business plan writing, setup an appointment for us to speak with the Queen Rania Center for Entrepreneurship at the Jordan-German University in Amman. When speaking to Mohammad, who runs the Center, he expressed that there is a lot of funding for the students in starting specifically tech companies, provided by Intel, and other multinational companies, which I was slightly surprised to hear but very glad to hear also, but he said that this funding and focus for the students is on tech companies, and there was one social enterprise, that was started and makes goods and then sells them online to fund social justice initiatives, but that students were widely not aware of social entrepreneurship and what it was. Mohammad knew of it of course, and also provided contact information to a Jordanian Ashoka Fellow, in which I later contacted to see if I could also meet with all of the Jordanian Ashoka Fellows in Amman while here, to brainstorm on how we could spread the word more widely in Jordan on social enterprises. I was also able to connect with an organization that provides microloans to underprivileged women and we inquired with their director to see if a presentation on social entrepreneurship would be beneficial to the women who received the microloans, but I also wanted to find out if these were sustainable businesses the women had started, or if they were just making enough to be able to feed themselves and their families. The goal is to connect with many other organizations, that will perhaps benefit from social enterprise knowledge, and trafficking awareness. My roommate and I, Rasha, will also be speaking at the Alhiyyah School for Girls tomorrow morning, on trafficking spreading awareness to the 12th grade female students on this topic, along with topics on body image, and American media, and a discussion around this, which I’m really looking forward to. I got a chance to meet several of the girls who go to the school at their Christmas luncheon, that Mrs. Haifa Najjar invited us to graciously, and they were lovely girls. Its so important at that age, that they are equipped with knowledge, and that they have a sense of self confidence, to know that they too can change the world, and that they don’t have to look like anything that is portrayed in American media, which many at this age in countries around the world, struggle with I was told, which causes anorexia, and causes them to be less conservative at these ages, in a culture that is widely conservative by nature, but American media has a very strong presence in the Middle East, so this is something I feel Americans must address more, what we export to other countries is so important, and what these little girls will see could detrimentally effect their lives, and their beliefs, and eat away at the positive things that their culture tries to instill in them, like decency and modesty. My heart breaks to know that American media has been and continues to negatively affect these girls, by what they see our American celebrity women doing and unmodestly wearing. It gave me an even greater passion to implement a project I devised working with the Christian Film Commission and people in L.A. around clean media on TV. Hollywood must evaluate what they are producing and how large of an impact it has on girls around the world detrimentally, and to be educated on porn and indecent materials ties to trafficking and poor body image of girls, and a conscious and unconscious change in their values that occurs.
The executive director of BPWA also happened to ask me if I had any information on fraud programs, as the Jordanian government has been pushing initiatives to help detect fraud in all areas, preventatively and in anti-money laundering programs, because of the previous corruption. I had to laugh when asked this, as I’m a former corporate fraud auditor, and developed Honeywell’s travel and expense fraud program, that catches executive fraud, and never thought that this knowledge or these skills would be used here at this time, but perhaps this is another avenue I will be able to assist Jordanian businessowners and fraud fighters in. This included a meeting with some private Jordanian businessmen this morning at 10am, to discuss how I could assist them.
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