FREEDOM of speech and the right to make her own decisions is what first interested Dalal Abdullah Kaki in the world of business in the Kingdom. As director of the women's business center at the Makkah Chamber of Commerce and Industry (MCCI), Kaki's goal is to be an effective design-maker and maybe one day even becoming a member of the Shoura Council. Originally from the holy city of Makkah, Kaki shifted from her job in the Ministry of Education to the world of business, having found what she had been searching for all of her life: The chance to make a difference for women in her society, the chance to be able to stand out in the crowd and have her voice heard. “I spent around 26 years in teaching until I realized that women have more freedom of speech and action in the business world, so I ended my journey as a teacher and entered the world of business,” she said. Kaki worked seven years as an English language teacher before becoming director of a public school in Jeddah. However, she was not new to the world of business, since she had worked as a volunteer organizer of the businesswomen's committee in the Makkah Chamber of Commerce and Industry for a number of years. “I entered the field of business a long time ago when I used to organize meetings for businesswomen as a member of the MCCI businesswomen's committee while I was working in the education sector,” she said. Kaki always wanted to get Makkah women to break out of the closed circle of old habits and customs that prevented them from expressing their opinions. “Makkah as a holy city is different, which is why people like to be conservative and keep their old customs. But as women, we should not necessarily be controlled by these old customs,” she explained. Raising her children as a single mother never stopped Kaki from striving to reach her goal in life. “I got divorced and raised four children, but that never stopped me from following my dream of being an effective member of society and even perhaps a member of the Shoura Council in the future,” she said. “I always dreamed of studying journalism at Umm Al-Qura University, but when I finished high school, journalism was not offered as a course of study in the university,” she explained. Kaki later expressed her passion for journalism through being the editor of the student magazine “Glimpses of Umm Al-Qura” while at that university in Makkah and as editor of the student magazine “Reflections” at King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah. Kaki said that her father was a member of the General Presidency of Youth Welfare and a football arbitrator, and “his job helped me shape a strong and independent career for myself different from other girls my age”.“I used to attend football games and training sessions with my dad and play football with his friends when I was a child. That is why I felt that I was a girl with the heart of a strong boy, which is why I succeeded alone in many things in my life,” she said. “I never stopped loving sports, which is why I became a founding member of sorority sports at the Faculty of Arts at King Abdulaziz University while studying there,” she added. Kaki who knows the pain of having a child with a disability has fought aggressively to improve vocational training in the Kingdom in order to give every student an equal chance to study. Kaki, who has a special needs daughter who suffers from dyslexia, said, “my daughter is clever but she cannot read or write as she should and her school never discovered the reason even after nine years of studying”. “Education in Saudi Arabia needs to focus on students with special needs, such as those suffering from dyslexia, a difficulty with reading, spelling and in some cases mathematics,” she added. “These cases require special attention and possibly vocational training, instead of forcing millions of students from different backgrounds, abilities and states of health to study the same curriculum.” Dyslexic people are visual, multi-dimensional thinkers and highly creative. They are excellent at hands-on learning because they think in pictures, although it is sometimes hard for them to understand letters, numbers, symbols, and written words. “Around five percent of the population is dyslexic, but we do not have trained and qualified teaching staff who can understand their problems and deal with them in the best way,” she said. “We should learn from the experiences of other countries, many of which focus on vocational training before students complete high school. This helps to reduce unemployment and the pressure on the government to provide jobs for graduates,” she added.
