Bank al Etihad and Zain Jordan have announced their sponsorship of Creative Business Cup competition which will be organized by Queen Rania Center for Entrepreneurship (QRCE) to strengthen the competencies of young entrepreneurs and help them turn their innovative business ideas into successful ventures.

Expressing her  pleasure to support this competition, her excellency Mrs. Nadia Al-Saeed, the General Manager of Bank al Etihad, said: "We are delighted to be part of this event which aims at developing the capabilities of the creative Jordanian youth to create favorable conditions  that help them create their own jobs and convert their creativity into projects that can supply value-added products and services to the domestic market".

“Our support for the event stems from the bank’s commitment to its corporate social responsibility strategy which drives us to empower gifted young people and encourage them to embrace actions directed at strengthening their abilities for building and executing successful projects capable of pushing the wheel of national economic development further out and reducing the rates of poverty and unemployment,” Al Saeed said.

In his comment, CEO of Zain Jordan, Ahmad Hanandeh, said: “We at Zain believe in the talents, capabilities, and skills of youth who can be an asset only if we invest in them. We also believe that our sponsoring of the competition represents the important role that Jordanian companies can play to advocate entrepreneurial skills among youth.”

For his part, the Executive Director of QRCE, Eng. Farhan Kalaldeh, welcomed the initiative taken by Bank al Etihad and Zain Jordan, saying: “We appreciate Bank al Etihad and Zain Jordan’s keenness to back this competition among other field activities which strive to fuel the spirit of innovation among Jordanian youth and develop their technical skills and personal capacities.”

Noting that QRCE has been receiving the competition’s application forms since 5th of July, 2012, Kalaldeh expected that Creative Business Cup will be a huge success and will draw a large number of interested university students and youth who can participate either with raw business ideas or the idea of a startup that is already in the market and whose external capital does not exceed 500,000$.

Kalaldeh also pointed out that the winners of the first three places will be awarded valuable prize money, noting that the first-place winner will get the opportunity to pitch their innovative business idea and represent Jordan at the International Creative Business Cup, slated to take place in Denmark in late 2012.

Creative Business Cup is a tool to nurture participants’ entrepreneurial skills, assisting them to develop and refine their business plans in design, architecture, content production (programming and computer games), advertising, press and books, video and film, arts and crafts, radio and TV, amusement parks, gastronomy, and music.

It is worth mentioning that organizing this contest is part of the ongoing preparations to host the Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) in the Kingdom. Representatives of several public bodies, private non-profit organizations, and academic institutions will take part in the upcoming event which aims to prompt community members to adopt the concept of leadership to service their community.