The Quality of Life Program is one of the programs to realize Saudi Vision 2030. It was launched in 2018 to improve the quality of life for individuals and families in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. This is achieved through creating, supporting, and introducing new options that enhance the participation of citizens, residents, and visitors in cultural, recreational, sports, and tourism activities. These options contribute to enhancing the quality of life, generating employment, diversifying economic activity, and enhancing the status of Saudi cities in the ranking of the world's best cities.
The program aims to open new horizons for quality of life sectors that directly affect citizens, such as sports, culture, heritage, arts, entertainment, and leisure.
The Quality of Life Program has enabled the diversification of recreational opportunities, such as reopening the cinema sector and organizing local and international recreational, sports, and cultural events. Examples include hosting the international Dakar Rally and opening numerous museums, cultural exhibitions, and music festivals. Additionally, it has invested in developing human resources in quality of life sectors by launching various academies, institutes, and programs aimed at developing talents, e.g., the filmmakers' development program and Mahd Sports Academy, as well as offering scholarships for male and female students to study culinary arts in international institutes.
The Quality of Life Program seeks to achieve several strategic objectives, including promoting sports activities in society, achieving excellence in various sports regionally and globally, developing and diversifying entertainment opportunities to meet the needs of residents, enhancing Saudi contribution to arts and culture, improving living conditions for expatriates, enhancing the urban landscape in Saudi cities, developing the tourism sector, preserving and promoting the Kingdom's Islamic, Arab, and national heritage, improving the quality of services provided in Saudi cities, and strengthening community resilience against drugs.
Achievements of the Quality of Life Program
The Quality of Life Program has achieved several milestones, such as launching the tourist visa, increasing the heritage sites inscribed on the list of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), localizing leadership jobs in the accommodation sector, activating and empowering the role of the private sector through automating the licensing process to facilitate the work of investors, and supporting them by establishing developmental funds like the Nomow Cultural Fund and the Kafalah Program for financing tourist projects. Some of the key achievements include:
- The Kingdom ranked first among Arab countries and twenty-first globally in the 2020 World Happiness Report issued by the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network.
- Launch of the Unified Security Operations Center 911 in Riyadh to improve the quality and speed of security services through a centralized operations center and achieve coordination and integration between all security and service entities.
- Launching numerous local and international entertainment, sports, cultural, artistic, tourist, and promotional events, activities, exhibitions, and competitions to enrich the lives of individuals and families.
- Launching programs for the development and localization of human capital towards the youth to align with Saudi Vision 2030 in the sectors of quality of life, in line with the needs of the labor market.
- Developing the infrastructure for quality of life sectors in the Kingdom, including sectors such as sports, culture, heritage, arts, entertainment, tourism, promotion, and hobbies, as well as the municipal sector and the security sector.
- Launching the tourist visa and issuing 440,000 visas, generating direct revenues of around SAR120 million.
- Launching more than two thousand sports, cultural, and volunteer events.
- Over forty-six million visitors attended entertainment events by the end of 2020.
- Over one thousand entertainment companies operate in the Kingdom.
- Providing more than 101,000 jobs until 2020.
In 2021, more than 720 diverse entertainment events were held across all regions of the Kingdom. This includes the Riyadh Season, in which more than a thousand private sector establishments participated. The season attracted over nine million visitors by the end of 2021 and contributed to the creation of over 144,000 direct and indirect jobs in November. The Saudi Summer Program for 2021, Our Summer, Your Mood, was launched in eleven destinations with five hundred tourism packages through more than 250 partners. Additionally, the Hawi Platform was launched, aiming to support amateur talents in the Kingdom by gathering and enabling them to establish clubs for their hobbies. This is in addition to supporting and enabling twenty Saudi entertainment projects.
Quality of Life Center initiatives
The Quality of Life Program works on establishing the necessary policies and regulations, as well as facilitating private sector investment in these sectors to ensure their growth and sustainability. In November 2018, the Council of Ministers approved the regulatory arrangements for the Quality of Life Center, which aims to sustain work on initiatives and projects that focus on diversifying lifestyles, developing infrastructure, and generally improving community well-being. The center has launched numerous initiatives, including:
- Enhancing community participation to contribute to the growth and sustainability of the promotion sector: The initiative aims to foster and develop targeted groups in the promotional sector by organizing events and activities that attract globally rated restaurants and enhance the shopping experience.
- Enhancing promotional offers across the Kingdom: The initiative works to enable the private sector to develop the infrastructure of the promotional sector by creating and developing a number of well-known promotional projects in Riyadh, Jeddah, and the Eastern Province.
- Developing a platform for amateur clubs: The initiative aims to develop an electronic gateway for amateur clubs allowing amateurs and clubs to communicate with each other and government entities.
- Marketing initiative for the Quality of Life Program: The initiative develops marketing and communication strategies and plans, launches marketing campaigns, and develops media materials to increase awareness of the quality of life in general.
- Developing an index to measure the quality of life: The initiative aims to create and develop an index to measure the quality of life standards in the Kingdom through the concepts of lifestyle and livability. The index measures the performance of Saudi cities in achieving the standards and compares their performance with each other.
- Quality of Life Conference: The initiative aims to hold a conference and workshops with the participation of local and international experts and specialists to present and discuss the latest developments in quality of life fields.
- National Youth Program: The initiative has launched several programs and events aimed at harnessing the passion of youth and embracing their skills.
- The umbrella organization for the hobby sector in the Kingdom, Hawi, and the launch of the National Portal for Hobbies.
Quality of Life Program targets for 2030
The Quality of Life Program continues its efforts to empower sectors like culture, heritage, sports, entertainment, tourism, and hobbies. The program seeks to enable and support amateurs and hobbyist groups, streamline the licensing procedures for amateur clubs, and ensure the sustainability and prosperity of this sector in the Kingdom. The program also aims to develop the municipal sector, including humanizing cities, improving the urban landscape, and enhancing provided services. The ultimate goal is to secure a high quality of life for the Kingdom's residents and visitors. Some of the program's key targets by 2030 include:
- Having three Saudi cities among the top one hundred most livable cities in the world.
- Employing 143,746 individuals in the Saudi cultural sector.
- Achieving a 90 percent level of trust in security services.
- Increasing the percentage of individuals engaging in sports and physical activities on a weekly basis to 40 percent.
- Having around 613 entertainment venues in the Kingdom.
- Employing 1.6 million direct employees in the tourism sector.
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