A successful Focus Group for Saudi Research Team (YARN)-Global Changemakers yet a misfortune for  the Yemeni Team due to BC IT limited access

On Thursday, Nov 12th 2009 the Saudi YARN team has organised a focus group facilitated by Abdullah Hamiduddin - Ethics and Societal Development Department - Acxiom S.A. and who provides strategic consultation on development projects for Government, NGOs, and Corporations in various fields.

Saudi YARN team invited a group of young people from an intellectual circle called (Harmonious Being) in order to participate in the focus group and enrich the session with their different views and diversified backgrounds.

The session started with sharing diverse definitions of identity (distinction of an individual or a group, an element that strengthen the feeling of belonging and independence, multi dimensional i.e. mother, son, husband, teacher and is reflected on the way people dress and behave, etc.). Later on and after going through cases where the virtual identity becomes the real one due to mocking, absorption or just feeling more comfortable in this new identity where less boundaries are controlling it, the group has concluded the session with a list that differentiates between the real and the virtual identity.

The Yemeni YARN team who is working on the same topic that Saudis have selected which is "Identity Vs Virtual Identity" was supposed to participate with the Saudi team through Skype after it has been tested a day earlier and went almost fine. Unfortunately the limited access put us down and they had to miss the opportunity of benefiting from this focus group.

On behalf of global changemakers which is partially a programme to empower youth in the fields of advocacy and creating awareness, we would like to walk the talk and request for a change in the BC IT policies in order to enable different countries to benefit from an important event happening in one country in the same region.