Interview with Naqa’a: Saudi Women Fighting For The Environment

From Green Prophet | 5th Nov 2010 | By Arwa Aburawa

Members of Naqa'a: Norah Magraby, Mona Othman, Muna Alamer, Elham Uthman, Reem Oudah, Amal Aljuhani, Wafaa Aljuhani and Shaima'a Alhajj.

For over five years, a small group of young Muslim women have been hard at work in Saudi Arabia helping to fight climate change. Naqa’a, the environmental enterprise, was setup with the aim of introducing environmental practices to organizations and spreading  Islam’s green message to the masses. The founders of the group were even selected by the White House to participate in the Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship. Arwa caught up with Norah Magraby, a full-time nurse who manages the organisation in her spare time, to find out more about their work, the biggest issues facing Saudi Arabia and the role that all Muslims must play in protecting the environment.

How did Naqa’a coming into being?

The idea of Naqa’a, or I must say the passion for improving our environment, started 5 years ago and it was shared between myself, Mona Othman and Muna Abdulkadir. We were inspired by environmental concerns during our undergraduate studies and as a result we established the first Green Society on campus to offer us an outlet for our passion. However, we have always wanted to have our own environmental business or project that would promote a greater positive change in our community as a whole so over a year ago (July 2009), we founded Naqa’a [...]

Read in full on GREEN PROPHET