Shell celebrates the graduation of more than 130 young Omanis who have been employed in Oman’s job market

Careers & Prospects is a ceremony which shell organizes every year to celebrate the graduation of new batches of young Omani high school graduate jobseekers that sign up in the company’s training for employment programme scheme to be trained in various career fields while been provided with sustainable jobs in the market place immediately after completing their respective training programmes.

The ceremony marked the graduation of more than 130 graduates in a number of sought for vocational specialisations in the job market and in areas such as AutoCAD engineering design, occupational health and safety, sales and debt collection. Among those graduated were also people with special needs that signed into special programmes conducted in the fields of carpentry and cashier.

It is worth noting that all these programmes were implemented in cooperation with the Ministry of Manpower, Nizwa University, The Association for Welfare of the Handicapped Children, Oman Society for Petroleum Services (OPAL), designated training institutes along with a number of private sector establishments who shall employ these graduates.

The ceremony also featured a comprehensive presentation that highlighted on Shell’s major social investment programme (SI) initiatives that were undertaken and successfully achieved during last year. The presentation was delivered by Muna bint Said Al Shukaili, Social Investment Advisor of SDO, who explained to the audience the nature and type of programmes Shell offers to the community especially in the area of training for employment which contributed in securing more than 130 jobs for young Omanis during 2011 whether in the private sector or by enabling them create self-employment prospects for themselves through creating their own businesses. 

Since one of the main thrusts of Shell’s social investment activities is to develop the capacity of young Omanis and enable them to enhance their skills to secure professional careers, Shell continued to invite training and learning experts to conduct training programmes for Omanis who work in the public, private sectors and non-governmental organizations, as well as students in schools, colleges and universities.  In 2011, 3182 Omanis benefited from the overall programmes offered by the company. Such programmes include for instance, Shell Professional Training Programme where 272 employees from various public and private sector organizations have participated In these professional training courses. The courses were carried in Muscat, Sohar and Nizwa, covering a total of 10 sessions covering different topics such as Strategic Thinking & Planning, Creative Thinking & Innovation Techniques, Women Career Development, Public Relation & Media, and Dynamic Leadership.

The company also continued to conduct its highly accredited Career Awareness Programme (CAP) for its fourth consecutive year now. CAP is a dynamic and energetic workshop designed to unleash the hidden potential of students who were approaching graduation. It focuses on how to deal with the reality of the challenging job market by highlighting how competitive it is to secure a job. The programme covered around 35 colleges and universities in the Sultanate and attracted more than 2000 students who are enroled in their second and last year of university.

The presentation also tapped on the other SI projects that Shell conducted in Oman last year in the areas of road safety, environment, and promoting enterprise.

In the area of road safety, Shell has undertaken the initiative of launching a comprehensive road safety road show campaign as part of its social responsibility in spreading road safety awareness in Oman. This campaign aims to reinforce road safety in the mind of every road user in the country. “Together For Accident Free Oman” is a road safety road show campaign backed by Oman Road Safety Association (ORSA) and was held at various locations across Oman to ensure that the road safety message is conveyed through reaching all levels of society. 8500 people participated in the campaign that took place in more than 22 locations across Oman in one month period. These locations were carefully identified and selected to ensure maximum public reach and presence while using devices such as a Seat-Belt Convincer and Car Driving Simulators have proved to be an effective way for the public to witness for themselves and realize the importance of wearing seat belts and driving safely within speed limits.

On the environment side, Shell supported the Global Flyway Network conference which was carried out in cooperation with the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ) and the Sultan Qaboos University represented by the Centre for Environmental Studies and Research (CESAR) and the Department of Biology. The conference aimed to raise awareness about wetlands in the Middle-East and to stress their international importance for the world’s biodiversity. More specifically, it focuses on the Middle- East - East African flyway, in which Barr al Hikman, a large pristine coastal wetland in the Sultanate, is a key wintering and stopover site for migratory birds which shows the importance of Oman within a worldwide bird migration network.

One of the key themes of our Social Investment Programmes is promoting enterprise development. Intilaaqah programme continues to play a key role in achieving this goal by providing guidance, funding ($17 million) and extending business development services.

His Excellency the guest of honour handed the graduates their certificates at the end of the ceremony and wished them continued success in their careers and jobs.

“We are very delighted to see more than a hundred and thirty young Omanis graduate today and every one of them got a job. Training young Omanis to secure jobs is one of the main pillars of our SI programme here in Oman. What really makes this year’s graduation special is the number of young Omanis with different disabilities that we trained and they secured jobs, we have trained 30 disabled people, and we are very proud of this. We shall continue our efforts to contribute to the Omani society in various ways, including road safety and developing entrepreneurs and    development of Human Resources. All considered to be core elements of our programme”, stated Hilal bin Yahya Al Mawali, Communications Manager of SDO.