If we want to hold a symposium, the first thing we should do is to decide who our audience is and then come up with the right name for the event. Let me give you some examples. It is not suitable for a dawah activist to go to a school of medicine and talk about Al-Bukhari's book on Hadith. It is not proper for a sports doctor to attend an economic forum and start talking about ligament injuries. I have noticed that many of the activities focusing on youth issues are held in the wrong places where there are no young people. It is no wonder that such events never bear fruit because the right audience has not been targeted. Recently, a symposium on the effect of cell phone addiction on young men and women was held in a literary club; there were no young people there and few knew about the club, let alone its location. The symposium should have been held on a university campus or at a gym where young people can be found. A young man once told me that these events were not useful because they kept talking about youth issues with no single young man in the audience; all of the attendees were writers and reporters. "What's the point of holding these events in the first place if young people are not invited?" he asked me. I believe he hit the nail on the head. I have noticed that most government agencies have gargantuan halls and auditoriums such as the ones that can be seen in universities, libraries, hospitals and ministry headquarters, but they are never put to good use. Rarely have I heard that an event has been held at one of these places. They are empty throughout the year. What I do not understand is why an agency would go to the expense of renting a hall in a hotel when it has a spacious auditorium on its premises. Where do these agencies get the money to do this and on what basis are they spending in this way? Nobody seems to monitor how money is spent by these agencies. Government agencies should start using their spacious halls and auditoriums instead of renting halls in expensive hotels. If they do not plan to use their own facilities, then they should consider transforming them into parking areas for the general public.
