Agthia, a leading UAE-based food and beverage group, has signed an exclusive three-year partnership with Injaz UAE, together launching the ‘Zaheb’ initiative, which crowns Agthia as the leading work readiness champion in Abu Dhabi.

Supported by Agthia’s chairman Dhafer Al Ahbabi, and its board, ‘Zaheb’, the local dialect Arabic word for ‘ready’, is aimed at developing workforce readiness skills for Emirati youth.  

‘Zaheb’ consists of a number of training activities and international business programmes organised by Injaz UAE, a member of Junior Achievement Worldwide – the largest experiential business education provider in the world.  

The partnership will offer four cutting-edge work readiness programmes benefiting 2,000 Emirati youth in the Abu Dhabi emirate in its first year.

The partnership will link 200 private sector mentors to students through up to 200 ongoing business mentoring sessions, workshops and the signature ‘Agthia Head Start Programme’ – which is to be piloted in the UAE for the first time.  

Agthia employees will be actively involved as well, acting as hosts to the popular JA Job Shadow Day programme – thus demonstrating a hands-on approach to business mentoring using the JA Worldwide model.

“This programme directly addresses one of the UAE’s most pressing challenges, which is to guide and encourage young Emiratis into the workplace, and more precisely into business and private enterprise.  Teaching young people about work skills and business is key to building their own job security and an economically prosperous future,” said Al Ahbabi.

Sulaf Saleh Al Zu’bi, chief executive officer of Injaz UAE, said: “We are absolutely delighted to welcome Agthia as a new strategic partner with Injaz UAE and our family of existing partners.

“The commitment and scale of Agthia’s support of work readiness programmes for Abu Dhabi represents a real quantum shift for us and subsequently our educational partners in terms of the impact we can make in the UAE.”

Injaz UAE’s model works on building partnerships between the business community, educators and corporate volunteers, to work together to empower youth to own their economic success.

This partnership is the largest of its kind in the UAE, and makes Agthia the largest contributor to Injaz UAE’s work readiness youth programme to date.  

The Agthia Head Start Programme - From the School to the Talent Pool - meets the needs of a diverse group of university students by providing engaging, academically enriching, and intense experiential learning seminars in work-readiness and career perspectives.

Piloted for the first time in the UAE, the programme will consist of a series of student conferences designed to ‘jump start’ youth’s careers and prepare them for better internship opportunities through cutting edge assessments and matching mechanisms.

Another ingredient of the Zaheb initiative will be to offer business training programmes to youth during the summer months that don’t have access to international training opportunities during the academic year.

Zaheb will also reward the efforts of its participants with an Annual Awards Ceremony for top students, educators, and volunteers in the Abu Dhabi emirate who make a difference for tomorrow’s workforce.

Agthia’s CEO Iqbal Hamzah and vice president – Human Capital and OD Toufic El Chaar will join Injaz UAE’s national board, whose members include presidents, chief executives, country heads and senior representatives of Bin Zayed Group, Boeing, HSBC, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, ExxonMobil, HSBC, Citi, Accenture, Omnicom Media Group, Shell, and Brunswick Group. - TradeArabia News Service