The State of Higher Education in Bahrain – are we up to the mark?

When a young person’s whole future depends on a certificate, should you care if it’s recognised?

I’m sure that you care about your children’s education and that too of the other youths in your society. Raring to “grow up” and get on with their lives. How harrowing is it then if at the cusp of their career they find that their toil for a number of years in a university has been worthless as its certification is deemed to be sub-standard and unrecognised?

This refrain has unfortunately become very familiar in Bahrain, with the snow-ball starting with Kuwait refusing to recognise some Bahraini “universities”, a fact confirmed by the QAAET. Some universities have made serious attempts at correcting their situations of course, but still, a number of young graduates are between the proverbial rock and a hard place and staring into what seams to them to be a bleak future.

On 1st of March 2009 at our regular weekly meeting the Club welcomed an expert to underline the issues of university certification accreditation and to help us learn more about this important topic.

The Rotary Club of Adliya welcomed Dr. Muna Al Balooshi – Assistant Secretary General for Accreditation and Evaluation, who talked to us about this subject and answered some of our questions.

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Click the Play button above to play the Podcast or click here to download it to your computer.

Please take the time to listen to the following Podcast which is a recording of her presentation. Should you wish to, you can also download her presentation in PDF format.

Tamkeen initiatives discussed at regular meeting

dr-ahmed-alshaikhThe Rotary Club of Adliya was privileged to host Dr. Ahmed Abdul Hameed Abdul Ghani Al Shaikh, the Vice President of Enterprise and Human Capital Development at Tamkeen (the rebranded Labour Fund) who shared with us their current initiatives and future vision for enacting the Labour Reform project of the Kingdom of Bahrain.

To hear the session, please play the Podcast below of download it and listen to it at your leisure.


Please click below to listen to the session’s Podcast (1 hour):
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The Tamkeen video:
[podcast format="video"]http://rotaryadliya.org/podcasts/tamkeen.mp4[/podcast]

Click to download the presentation delivered by Dr. Ahmed Al-Shaikh.

Bahrain TV features Rotary Club of Adliya’s BAHMUN program

Bahrain TV’s Channel 55 “Open Talk” program, hosted and produced by Ms. Ahdeya Ahmed, featured our current President Nazha Abu Hendi and Past President and Incoming District Governor Nijad Al-Atassi in a wide ranging interview in which the very successful BAHMUN program was discussed as well as various other aspects of the club’s community efforts.

Here is the full interview for your viewing pleasure, do please enter your feedback as a comment below if you would. You can also download this episode as a podcast should you wish to view it offline.

[podcast format="video"]http://rotaryadliya.org/podcasts/OpenTalk-RotaryAdliya.m4v[/podcast]
download episode

It’s good to see everyone after the summer break!

Press coverage of the regular meeting held on 18 Aug 08. This one by Alwaqt published on 20 Aug 08.

Press coverage of the regular meeting held on 18 Aug 08. This one by Alwaqt published on 20 Aug 08.


Last night was the first regular club meeting after the traditional summer break the club takes in August. The meeting was certainly abuzz with the excitement of seeing everyone again; fellowship, of course, is on of the main tenets of Rotary life.

We were also fortunate to welcome two guests and a visiting Rotarian.

There was no scheduled speaker for the meeting last night, but I was asked to introduce our various online activities to those present, an activity I welcomed of course, and introduced this website, the EarthDayBahrain.org and its shop which is more than ready to display the fantastic creations of children and professional artists who donated their time and effort during last year’s major charity activity. A lot of those paintings are available for sale, the prices are mentioned on the site, so please take the time to visit and buy a painting or two to help our club help our community.

Another activity that I featured last night was of course our Flickr album which houses many photographs of members and our activities. If you have a Flickr account (it’s free, and Flickr gives you the opportunity to even upload up to 200 pictures of your own in that account) you can create your own virtual album of your favourite pictures not only from our section, but from any other source on the service.

Let me now leave you with the recording of last night’s session which you are more than welcome to download and listen to at your leisure, or indeed click the play button below to listen to it online.

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Click the PLAY button to listen online, or download mp3 file or simply subscribe to the club’s Podcast feed to have every podcast delivered automatically to your computer.

Membership drive plan for 2008 unveiled

The third regular meeting was held on the 21st of July at the regular venue of the Diplomat Radisson Hotel and was inaugurated by President Nazha Abu-Hendi who welcomed two guests to the session; Mr. Hassan Foulad and PP Mr. Jano Muawwad of the Rotary Club of Salmaniya.

After some club announcements and words of wisdom from the club’s Sargent-at-Arms Aroop Takyar, Madam President invited PP Redha Faraj to the floor to share with us his plans – as the chairperson of the Membership Committee for the current year – to increase and consolidate the membership of the club. He also advised us of some changes to the rules affecting Rotary membership starting this year. You can view his presentation which is available as a pdf file here.

Club Treasurer Zoher Taher outlined his plans to expedite the selling of the Earth Day Art Competition paintings by contacting leading companies and organisations in Bahrain by writing them some letters advising them of the paintings’ availability and then following up with them to effect the sales, the proceeds of which will obviously help our club’s endeavours.

Lastly, Mahmood Al-Yousif, the chairperson of the Public Relations committee demonstrated the new club website (at http://rotaryadliya.org) to the members and advised them on ways to implement their newly created club email addresses. He also outlined his plans to effect a new and informative way to communicate the club’s activities to the members by adopting a new email format which will include information about the meeting’s venue, the main speakers for the evening together with a short biography and other features of the meeting. He suggested that this email should go out by Wednesday of every week with a short reminder on Sunday morning.

All of this information and more is available through our regular Podcast, please click below to listen to the meeting, or download it to your device and listen to it at your convenience.

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Click the PLAY button to listen online, or download mp3 file
Please subscribe to our full Podcast stream.
Support files: 2008/2009 Membership Drive Presentation