Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Tomorrow I will be part of a Qatar University panel, speaking about foreign press coverage of the Gulf and specifically Qatar. This roundtable discussion is being hosted by QU’s journalism department and will take place in the Admin Building Conference Room from 11am-2pm.

The poster below has all the details, and all are invited to attend. So come join us!

Monday, April 22, 2013

Hi folks! We had a very interesting discussion that was very well attended. Here’s a picture of the panel:

Story and Photos by Christina Maria Paschyn

These articles and photography were published by Wamda on April 1, 2013. 

Qatar has one of the highest obesity rates in the world. About 40% of its citizens are obese, and experts predict that number could rise to more than 70% by 2015.

So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that some local entrepreneurs are launching startups with the aim of making the country’s population more health conscious.

Raw ME, a raw and vegan food company, is one such new venture. Founded by Qatari-American Layla Al-Dorani, 28, the company sells unpasteurized, cold-pressed juices, and special detox packages and monthly juice kits that customers can order to their homes or workplaces.

“We try to provide food that is very wholesome and nutritious and closer to nature, but blended, squeezed and mixed into something that tastes good,” Al-Dorani says.

Raw ME’s website outlines what makes its juices special. The startup uses a special hydraulic press juicer that applies 2 tons of pressure to squeeze the produce so that the resulting juice supposedly contains 3-5 times more nutrients and a higher concentration of enzymes and vitamins than the typical mass-produced fare. The cold-pressed method, which minimizes contact with air or heat, also results in a slower oxidation process, which allows the juices to stay fresh for longer.

Photo by Christina Paschyn, 2013.

Expanding in the Gulf

Despite launching only two years ago, Raw ME is already making a name for itself. In 2012, it won second place in the Al Fikra Business Plan Competition and was named a finalist in the SILA angel investment network live demonstration, where entrepreneurs from around the Middle East presented their business plans to a group of angel investors in Doha. This year it was also a finalist in the Reyada Award, which honors Qatari entrepreneurs.

The business, however, is still getting up on its feet; Al-Dorani only recently hired a general manager to oversee her small kitchen and production facility in Barwa Village near Doha’s airport.

Still, she has big plans.

Al-Dorani wants to sell juices online and through various vendors throughout Doha and, eventually, Dubai. The vendor sites would also include a permanent raw-food salad bar that would be healthy as well as ecofriendly: the bar’s plumbing would be recycled to water an on-site green grass wall, leftover juice pulp would be donated as fertilizer to local agricultural projects, and the salad bar’s take away boxes would double as plant pots.

“We’re trying to encourage education and awareness,” she says. “For me it’s about collaboration; how can we work together to create a vendor setup that is actually using recycled contents?”

Al-Dorani says she is currently in talks with several possible vendor sites, including Qatar Foundation’s Education City main student cafeteria.

Once her salad bars and juice stands are actually up and running, Al-Dorani’s company will fill a necessary niche in Qatar. As any resident can tell you, unhealthy foods and snacks tempt at every corner. In most public dining areas, it’s difficult to find quick-and-easy unprocessed, nutritious meals.  Raw ME will likely appeal not only to those who already believe in the benefits of raw food, but also to those simply hoping to lose some weight.

Facing Competition

The concept is original, but Raw ME does face some local competition in the health food delivery space. No other company is focusing exclusively on raw juice, but several other Qatar-based health food delivery services exist, including the Green Box, which delivers locally sourced and organic produce, poultry and cheese, and Diet Center, which provides low-calorie meals to subscribers.

For now, Al-Dorani’s biggest challenge lies in convincing potential clients that raw food and juices are the best way to change a person’s eating habits and lifestyle.

“We’re special because we believe in protecting our food and not over processing it. And as far as the other diet shops, we’re not based on calorie counting. We’re based on how you can get the most fruits and veggies in your diet in one day, and we try to meet that target, “ Al-Dorani says.

“There’s been a lot of positive feedback,” she adds. She’s also planning to minimize competition in a small sector by teaming up with her competitors to sell each other’s products. “If people order their fruits and veggies and poultry from the Green Box, and want to juices with that too, we can provide it.”

Al-Dorani says she is also considering developing raw food meals and juice detox kits with the Art of Abundant Living, a local wellness and health-coaching center.

“That’s one of the benefits about being a startup, “ Al-Dorani explains. “You try to work with what’s existing in the market instead of having to spend a large amount of capital upfront.”

Photo published by Wamda.com. By Christina Paschyn, 2013.

By Christina Maria Paschyn

This article was published on March 19, 2013 by Al Fanar, an independent news site dedicated to covering higher education in the Arab world.

A recent shake up in the United Arab Emirate’s Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research has left many local academics uncertain about the future of higher-education leadership in the Gulf country.

Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak Al Nahyan, who led the ministry for more than 20 years, stepped down from the position last week as part of a general cabinet reshuffling. He will move to another cabinet position and will keep control of the three federal universities, which one source called “his babies.” Sheikh Hamdan, Nahyan’s younger brother and the minister of public works since 2004, has succeeded him as head of higher education.

Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, UAE vice president, prime minister and ruler of Dubai, announced the cabinet changes on Twitter. Those changes included new appointments to the ministries of state affairs and energy. The sheikh’s tweets implied the government is making way for a younger generation: “There will be young faces with new ideas and energy to keep up with the rapid changes and to deal with our people’s top priorities,” he said on March 12th.

But the unexpected announcement of Sheikh Nahyan’s departure from his long-held position (from 1990-March 2013, minus a two-year period as Minister of Education from 2004-2006) caught many UAE professors and educators off guard.

“I safely can say I don’t think anybody within the normal education circles saw that coming,” said one source broadly familiar with UAE higher education, who asked to remain anonymous to protect his job. “From a career point of view, Nahyan has been in that position since the beginning.”

Nahyan, a member of the monarchy, is a respected and popular figure in the UAE. Academics and international journalists often praised him for his efforts to advance higher education. During his tenure, he was credited with tightening admission standards for federal universities and establishing preparatory programs for students who could not make the cut. He also created an academic accreditation commission and many supporters say his work has led to an expansion of higher-education opportunities for Emirati women as well as the near eradication of illiteracy in the Emirates.

His most controversial policy was to make English the main language of instruction for most of the country’s colleges and universities. “Nahyan has always had a very straightforward point of view about this and felt that students should be bilingual, that English is the business language of the world, and if [Emiratis] were going to ‘succeed’ that would be the language they should work in,” said one source.  But some parents and members of the Federal National Council, formed to represent Emiratis in the government, have continued to agitate for a return to Arabic.

Nahyan now has been appointed the Minister of Culture, Youth and Community Development. And he has told local media he will continue to lead the UAE’s three federal universities: Zayed University, United Arab Emirates University and the Higher Colleges of Technology.

“One might have expected, because this is the pattern that Nahyan himself had set, that the minister of higher education is also the president of these universities. I wonder personally whether that’s not a kind of transitional stage,” said Alma Kadragic, a former director of the masters programs in media and communication and international studies at the University of Wollongong in Dubai.

Other education sources speculated that perhaps Nahyan’s retention of the federal universities may be temporary while his brother learns his new job.

“That may be a part of this deal,” a source said. “Let’s assume Sheikh Nahyan for the next year stays in that current position as the head of the three universities. It’s a good mentorship; it’s a good way to educate someone as they’re moving into a new position.”

Kadragic cautioned that the lack of government transparency in the UAE means academics can only guess what the motivations behind ministerial changes may be.

Matt Duffy, a former communication professor at Zayed University, speculated that Nahyan may have been pushed out of his existing job for being too liberal.

“Nahyan understood the value of education, including a liberal arts education,” Duffy said. “I believe he welcomed the role of dialogue, free speaking and a free exchange of ideas in higher education. He was definitely a good higher education minister.”

Last year, Duffy’s contract at Zayed University was unexpectedly terminated. He said he was forced to leave the UAE because he challenged the country’s culture of journalistic self-censorship.

Duffy said he was told Nahyan had tried unsuccessfully to appeal his contract termination, which had been ordered from “outside the university system.” He speculated that perhaps the sheikh is facing a reprisal for trying to promote more open academic discourse.

Since the Arab Spring, UAE security forces have taken a stronger role in telling universities what they can or cannot do and what types of academics could be hired, Duffy said. “It became very well known at Zayed that academics from many Arab countries simply were not going to clear security.”

Other academics and policy experts expressed concerns about whether Nahyan’s younger brother, Sheikh Hamdan, will be up to the challenge of running the demanding Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research.

“[Sheikh Hamdan of the Ministry of Public Works] is very low-profile,” Kadragic said. “One didn’t read his name in the paper every day. Sheikh Nahyan was covered quite often because of his activities with these universities. He was opening and organizing conferences all the time.”

That visibility will be needed to win support for education, sources said: “This isn’t the Defense [Ministry]. This is tougher money to secure.”

Some academics said that if the UAE does not offer better hiring packages and more research support to potential faculty members, the country may lose high-quality professors to other Arab nations like Qatar, which dedicates approximately 2.8% of its annual gross domestic product to research and development. The UAE, on the other hand, invests a fraction of one percent on scientific research.

Others are more optimistic about the new minister’s potential. Dr. Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, a retired Emirati professor of political science at UAE University, said he hopes the younger bin Nahyan will make up for his brother’s shortcomings.

“The position could have gone to anybody but the fact that it is Nahyan’s brother is immaterial,” Abdulla said. “The fact is somebody had to take over from Sheikh Nahyan and it just happened that his brother has taken over. I think you have a lot of good work done so far, and he needs to consolidate the good work that was done by Sheikh Nahyan. But there are other things that he could do better, starting with the Emiratization of faculty members.”

“When you look at the faculty [at Zayed and HCT], they are all non-UAE, and that is one thing Sheikh Nahyan has not addressed,” he added. “To leave this out for 10-20 years without addressing it in a proper way is a major deficiency of Sheikh Nahyan’s handling of higher education in the UAE.”

Representatives from the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research and Ministry of Public Works did not respond to requests for interviews.

I’m proud to announce the release of my students’ latest major reporting project: Qatar Under Construction, a multimedia website that features an array of print, video, photo and data visualization reports on Qatar’s construction and fire safety crisis. The site was produced as part of Advanced Online Storytelling, an intensive 5-week journalism course I teach every spring semester.

From our press release: “This is a topic that captured international attention when Qatar was awarded the 2022 World Cup,” says Christina Paschyn, instructor of Northwestern’s journalism course, Advanced Online Storytelling. “But perhaps more importantly, since the tragic fire at Villaggio Mall last year, which killed 19 people, including 13 children, Doha’s citizens and residents have recognized the country’s poor safety standards to be a pressing issue that must be addressed.” 

The site, which offers in-depth investigative analysis of the issue, has gotten wonderful reviews from local publications in Doha, including the Peninsula and Doha News. Some of the comments we received about the website’s video report on the Villaggio fire aftermath (on Doha News) were truly touching. Like this heartfelt one from Jane Weekes, who tragically lost her triplets in the fire.

“I would like to congratulate, thank and commend the students of NU-Q for the making of this excellent video. As the film states, we are still looking for answers and justice for the negligence of the Villaggio Mall owners and management, Gympanzee owners and management, as well as the authorities who allowed the mall and nursery to operate when they continuously breached so many safety standards. We hope the evidence of the trial will be shared transparently, and those responsible are held truly accountable for causing the deaths of 19 people. Of equal importance we hope that the authorities take heed of the points raised in this video and step up to making country wide improvements to safety in Qatar. Buildings should be built with the safety of those who enter them as the first priority, and those people who breach basic safety standards because of greed must be shut down before they cost the lives of more people and no other families need suffer the completely avoidable loss of their loved ones.” 

Jane – Mother to Lillie, Jackson and Willsher died age 2 on 28 May, Villaggio Mall.

And this comment from Biella Qatar:

The Peninsula also gave us a great spread in the February 20, 2013, PLUS section of the newspaper. So dear readers, please check out Qatar Under Construction. You can read the rest of our press release here.

Hungry for more great reporting? Visit last year’s acclaimed reporting project on Qatar’s diabetes and obesity crisis, Qatar Sweet Epidemic.

This article appeared in the February 2013 issue of Qatar Happening magazine. Download the PDF.

Two years ago, Jordan Coles was overweight, underemployed and depressed. Then 22, he was still living with his folks and working a dead-end job at a government employment and benefits center. To top it off, the 5’10 Welshman tipped the scales at 210 pounds.

Coles thought his life really couldn’t get much worse.

But then he got sacked.

“I was told [I was fired] in the morning, and I literally went straight home. I was a bit upset and I thought, ‘alright, what am I going to do now?’” Coles recounted. 

That’s when he got serious about pulling himself out of his rut.

“So that day I remember moaning. But then I got home, I went out on my bike, and I thought, ‘I’m going to change my physique and I’m going to see what comes of it.’”

Over the next two months, Coles lost 35 pounds; today he weighs 175 pounds and sports a ripped body many would envy. But Coles’ personal transformation goes beyond the superficial. Six months ago he finally moved out of his parents’ home in Aberdare, Wales, to start a new life and career in Doha as a personal trainer for Absolute Fitness. His past experience, Coles says, gives him a professional edge.

“A lot of personal trainers have been healthy all their lives and they haven’t had to battle a weight issue, whereas I feel passionate about personal training because I can relate to my clients and what they are going through,” he said. “I’ve been there myself.”

If clients are willing to put in the effort, they will see benefits that extend beyond the physical, Coles says. The results may even prove inspirational.

“Exercise lifts you – it makes you a lot more alert and gives you energy. Obviously, then you feel better and you get more out of life,” he explained. “As soon as he saw my transformation, my brother started training himself. My mother and father have lost over 2-3 stones [about 28-42 pounds] each as well, so it’s been a family transformation.”

But you don’t have to slave away at the gym to get in shape. In fact, Coles insists less is more.

“In the beginning, I had a lot of free time on my hands, so I was exercising about 2-3 hours a day. Unfortunately, I really didn’t have the knowledge of the good ways of training until I took a course and qualified as a personal trainer,” he said. “At the time I seemed to be doing a lot of long-duration [cardio] activity. If I had incorporated high-intensity interval training instead, I would have gotten to my goal weight a lot faster.”

But don’t expect a quick fix, Coles warns.

“Don’t just have a personal trainer for a month and stop coming all of a sudden. Don’t go on a diet just for a month and lose a lot of weight, because you’re more likely to just pile it all back on. Unfortunately, this is what happens for a lot of people,” he advised. “You really have to make a lifestyle change.”

Nutrition is paramount. “Eighty percent importance comes down to nutrition. I can say that as an absolute fact because I was training 2-3 hours a day and then I got to a certain point where I wasn’t seeing changes in my body until I really started portion control and measuring my fats, protein and carb intake,” he explained.

Coles recommends eating five small meals a day; these should consist of as much “super foods,” like vegetables, as possible. He also suggests giving yourself one cheat day per week so you don’t experience too much of a junk food withdrawal.

Don’t know where to begin? Follow Coles’ lead. He exercises 5-6 times a week for about an hour at a time, incorporating a combination of strength training and high-intensity interval cardio.

“My sessions are very similar to what I give my clients. But obviously, it’s all about progression,” Coles said. “What really drove me on is that month by month I could see changes in my strength. I became a lot stronger, and in my fitness I was able to run a lot faster or for a longer distance. That alone is great for clients; as we go on, we do a lot of tests and measurements.”

It’s an approach that seems to work well for Martha Darby, 40, originally from Ireland. She has been training with Coles since October.

“Jordan is really good to work with. He brings his own experience and personal fitness journey to the training which instantly made me feel “human” and made my goals achievable,” Darby said. “He is realistic and doesn’t expect you to train everyday or to stop eating the nice things in life! He provides lots of variety in the sessions so you never know what to expect and there is no fear of getting bored!”

But beyond the food, sweat and fitness routines, Coles says the number one thing a person needs to succeed, in weight loss and in life, is a positive attitude.

“There are going to be times when you’re aching and you don’t feel like coming to a [personal training] session. But what I try to get across to my clients is that it’s not just about losing weight. It’s about adopting a positive outlook to life in general,” Coles explained.

“You start living better, start taking care of yourself better and then everything seems to fall into place. I believe I would never have been offered this opportunity [in Qatar], doing a job that I love, if I hadn’t adopted that positive attitude. I probably would still be unemployed, overweight and unhappy.”

Jordan Coles is a personal trainer at Absolute Fitness, which offers personal training, group training, bootcamps, nutrition guidance and corporate/wellness solutions. The hourly rate for 1-1 Personal Training is 300 QAR. Or book 10 sessions for 2,500 QAR. Visit http://www.fitnessqatarpt.com/ for more information and to hire a trainer.

A video report for the Euronews Learning World series. National Geographic photojournalist Reza Deghati frequently visits schools to show children how photography can change the world. Euronews follows Reza during his recent visit to Lycee Bonaparte in Doha, Qatar.

Produced, shot and edited by Christina Paschyn. Broadcast on Friday, Jan. 11, 2013. See this episode as it originally appeared on Euronews.

Reza report begins at 3:52.

Here’s a blast from the past. When I was a wide-eyed, button-nosed nine year old living in Parma, Ohio, I “published” my own newspaper!

Called Kids News, I ended up printing about four issues before shutting down the presses, and, despite the title, I’m pretty sure there wasn’t a modicum of factual information in there. But I have to give credit to my amazing mother – she helped me print and distribute the copies to all my classmates at St. Josaphat Ukrainian Catholic School.

Behold, my start as a journalist:

My first newspaper. I “published” this when I was 9 years old!

Check out my message from the editor…hopefully, I’m a much better writer now. And notice my title, “Editor & Chief.” Clearly, I hadn’t learned the value of fact-checking yet (or grammar, as the newspaper’s name would suggest)

Northwestern University in Qatar had a chance to showcase its awesome broadcast journalism program at Doha Film Institute Family Days all weekend. Our production staff and talented students set up a mock news desk and invited local families to try their hand at anchoring, reporting and running the control panel.

I acted as the NUQ host, introducing the activity and explaining to the audience just how much our university really rocks. That’s not hard to do when you’re one of the best journalism schools in the world!

We put on a live newscast nearly every hour from about 3pm-8pm on both days, and all the participating kids had a fantastic time.

Every year, DFI Family Days offers an array of creative workshops and activities for children and their families during the Doha Tribeca Film Festival.

NUQ at DFI Family Days. Image by Jan-Marie Petersen.

By Christina Maria Paschyn

This article was published by Wamda.com on Dec. 3, 2012. 

More than 30 budding entrepreneurs pitched their innovative business ideas at Startup Weekend Doha this past weekend.

Forming their ideas from personal experience and need, most of the weekend’s participants pitched startups that would fill a practical niche for the Doha community, such as a grocery delivery service, an event listing website and an Arabic-language technology magazine. Clearly dedicated, many incorporated motion-based power point presentations and drafted functioning mock designs of company websites. Some of the presenters were also so enthusiastic, that they often interrupted the judges during the question and answer period to add more details.

The best idea turned out to be Doxa, a comprehensive online review site created by Adil AbdulAziz, Rashid Al-Naemi, Tejas Kumar and Nasser Al-Naimi, who are all 25 or younger. The platform is a free forum where people can share their opinions on literally everything and anything, from technology and apparel to even furniture and government services. For a fee, Doxa would also provide businesses with detailed data analysis and trend detection on worldwide comments about that company and its services.

Doha Links, a company that would provide infotainment devices in local taxis, was voted first runner up. Founded by Mufeed Ahmed, 27, and Abudllatif Al-Kuwari and Salman Al Sulaiti, who are both only 15, the team based their device off existing models operating in taxi cabs in New York and Dubai. How their version differs, they say, is that it provides actual interactive functionality, access to the Internet and quality information instead of just paid advertisements. They presented a working model of their proposed infotainment tablet.

The second runner up was Time Bank, founded by Majd Alshibli, 23, Ismail Mohammed, 30, and Malaka Al-Said, 24. Time Bank is a social organization that helps to connect students with potential employers by training them to fill temporary vacancies at participating companies. The company would only pay Time Bank if they decide to hire the student full time. Meanwhile, the student would also receive “time credit,” which they can exchange for other Time Bank services, such as further skill training.

Guest speaker Khalid Aboujassoum, co-founder and executive manager of ibTECHar, an education technology startup, praised the presentations, while encouraging participants to think globally instead of locally and to move away from business models that rely heavily on ads for revenues.

“People are thinking of localizing global services. They want to create the Groupon of the GCC or Qatar or the Ebay of Qatar, and all of that,” Aboujassoum said. “It’s important to emphasize that we need these services; I’m not saying we don’t need them. It’s just that we don’t want to get into this black hole of localizing things when the doors are really open for globalization.  We need to have the mindset that ‘I want to create the next Facebook’ and not just ‘I want to copycat one of the existing success stories.’”

“Localization also puts everyone in the advertising model, and advertising is a very, very, very vulnerable business model,” he added. “It’s about eyeballs and sights, and people’s interests can change overnight. It’s the easiest way for you to propose to make money; you think, ‘yeah, I’ll just use advertising.’ But there is a system that advertising works upon; there are certain rules that you need to oblige yourself to. This is where entrepreneurs get into trouble. So my point is that advertising is just a symptom of a bigger [and problematic] way of thinking, which is localizing rather than globalizing.”

Startup Weekend Doha was organized by the Digital Innovation Center, run by Maha Fayyad Mahamed, Hind Al-Saad, Ahmed Laiali and Ahmed Chehata, and sponsored by Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar, Microsoft and Qtel. The top teams were awarded 3 hours of entrepreneurship consulting from the Digital Innovation Center.

–

Christina is a multimedia journalist and Lecturer of Journalism in Residence at Northwestern University in Qatar. She previously worked at the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, and has reported for major news organizations across the globe, including TIME Magazine and the CBS News bureau in London, E News in Johannesburg, and KVRR-TV as the station’s political correspondent in Washington, D.C. In 2009 she reported on the Gaza War for CNN as well as WEWS News Channel 5 in Cleveland.  Christina holds a BS and MS in broadcast journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University and studied abroad at the American University in Cairo.