The first of the youth hackathons, the "Innovative Housing Solutions Lab.. A future youth vision," in joint cooperation between the Ministry of Housing and Urban Planning, the Housing Bank, the Ministry of Youth Affairs, and the Institute of Public Administration, in conjunction with the Social Housing Innovation Conference and Exhibition, which is held under the patronage of His Royal Highness Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, Crown Prince and Prime Minister.May God protect him.
The hackathon event, which will be held with distinguished youth participation during the period between April 21 and 24, aims to enable Bahraini youth to contribute effectively to developing innovative solutions and options to provide social housing services to citizens.
The hackathon event focuses on introducing participants to the Housing Solutions Laboratory and the basics of design thinking on which the hackathon idea is based.
The participants were divided into university students, graduates and entrepreneurs to work within multidisciplinary teams to create innovative, applicable ideas that contribute to diversifying housing options.
The first discussion session began with representatives of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Planning and the Housing Bank, about efforts to develop housing services, where Mr. Ahmed Kamel Al Sharaf, Director of the Developer Affairs Relations Department at the Ministry of Housing and Urban Planning, spoke about ideas through which a number of challenges related to the housing sector can be overcome.Social, through optimal use of financial resources and land areas, which contributes to increasing real estate inventory Then diversify and multiply housing options for citizens benefiting from financial services.
During the session, Al Sharaf stressed that the Ministry of Housing and Urban Planning is keen to communicate directly with real estate developers, which contributes to expanding the provision of housing projects through the government land development rights program, so that citizens who benefit from financing services can benefit from them, and then provide adequate housing for citizens.
In turn, Mrs. Iman Hassan Al-Abbasi, Director of the Housing Finance Department at the Ministry of Housing and Urban Planning, reviewed the efforts made by the Ministry to provide financing to beneficiary citizens to enable them to obtain adequate housing through partnership with the private sector.
Al-Abbasi explained the continuation of efforts to develop the financing program, by taking into account the difference in awareness among citizens about the different financing mechanism and choosing the most appropriate financing, noting that the Ministry has developed a mechanism to provide financing consultations to citizens wishing to benefit from housing financing programs and to answer all consultations related to the provisions and standards of financing.
For his part, Mr. Khaled Al-Eid, Training and Institutional Development Advisor at the Institute of Public Administration, presented an overview of the design thinking methodology, which will be the approved methodology for finding innovative solutions to challenges, explaining that the groups will be divided and each group will have a special mentor, and each team will choose a challenge in the social housing sector and find solutions.The proposed and innovative mechanisms will be presented to specialists for evaluation and determining the winning teams.
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