Ooredoo participates in Global Citizen Festival in New York

Dr. Nasser Marafih, Group CEO of Ooredoo, recently attended and appeared on stage at the Global Citizen Festival in New York, as part of the company’s commitment to supporting the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals – “Global Goals”.

The Global Citizen Festival, which was held on 26 September, saw a swarm of celebrities take to the stage in New York’s famous Central Park, as the event aimed to raise awareness on the UN’s goals to eradicate extreme poverty, improve the lives of people and create an all-round healthier world for tomorrow.

Dr. Nasser, who joined other corporate leaders on-stage during the event, said: “The Mobile sector has an important role to play in helping the UN achieve its Global Goals, not least because mobile technology can make a direct contribution to achieving a significant number of the 17 Global Goals. Ooredoo is proud of supporting the UN’s goals as part of our company’s vision, and we will use our world-class network to help spread this important message to our customers across our footprint.”

In all, 193 world leaders have adopted the Global Goals, a series of 17 ambitious targets to end poverty, fight inequality and injustice, and tackle climate change for everyone by 2030. The concert included a host of celebrity performances including music’s superstars Ed Sheeran, Coldplay, Beyoncé and Pearl Jam. Global figures including Malala Yousafzai, Queen Rania of Jordan, Ban Ki-moon, Michelle Obama, Joe Biden, Xavier Bettel and Joseph Muscat also made appearances to talk about the importance of the Global Goals.

Multi-national corporations and their leaders joined the Festival to make new commitments on behalf of their companies that will support achieving the Global Goals in the years to come. In addition, the event hosted an on-stage commitment from some of the world’s biggest mobile operators, including Ooredoo, who pledged to reach over 1.5 billion people around the world, telling them about the goals. Many Ooredoo operations, such as the Maldives, Oman and Kuwait, have already sent out text messages and used their social media channels to communicate the Global Goals.

In all, there were 1.3 million mentions on social media of the event, with #globalgoals trending across the world thanks to the support of 20 of the world’s top websites, Prime Minister David Cameron, Hillary Clinton, Jennifer Lopez, Ashton Kutcher, One Direction, David and Victoria Beckham, and more. As well as raising awareness, Ooredoo continues to support a range of initiatives targeting three of the key Global Goals areas. These include Goal 3,Good health, where Ooredoo already supports Mobile Clinics in Algeria, Indonesia, Myanmar and Tunisia, the specialised maternal healthcare app “MayMay” in Myanmar and humanitarian and disaster response initiatives across its footprint.

In addition, the company is supporting Goal 5, to push for Gender equality, providing services for women in markets ranging from Iraq to Indonesia, bringing more women online in order to enhance women economic empowerment.Most recently,Ooredoo has extended the Connected Women programme in the Maldives by creating the ‘Smart Ideas for Women’ challenge which invites people to share ideas on how technology can be used to empower women and girls within Maldivian society.

Through a range of smart solutions and initiatives supporting Goal 9, Innovation and infrastructure, Ooredoo is working to help everyone stay connected all of the time, and power local innovation in each of its markets In all, 60,000 people attended the all-day Global Citizen Festival, after completing “an action journey” to earn their ticket, which could include writing to politicians, posting political messages on Twitter, spreading the message of Global Goals and more. It was reported that more than 200,000 people took action across more than 100 countries.