Jordan; a 110% behind entrepreneurs. sho bitgol ?!

Nassim was Talking a while back about issue blogging so I thought I'll pitch in to the cup, what I want to talk about today is a fairly simple issue; how regulations, the blessings system and bureaucracy blocks and crushes entrepreneurial spirit in our community. It really is interesting for me to be living in a country and always hearing people say that they are a 110% backing entrepreneurs. while, in reality, they are just paddling backwards when it comes to it.

well the story goes like this, a group of Jordanian individuals came up with an idea that had a lot of potential, something that would raise the level of services in the public schools.

The idea was to centralize the food production for schools, to arrange that all the food that will be provided for the public school to be produced and packaged in a central stations located in proximity to a group of schools and delivered fresh daily to the schools. each meal will compose of a balanced diet, the centralization of the meal will reduce the cost on the students and there will be subsidies and aids. Even 10% of the profits will go into a scholarship & aid fund for the students, without effecting the current break-ups. The element that will be effected is the system in which the teachers at the beginning of the year cut a deal with the falafel store at the corner of the school to provide the cafeteria with sandwiches around the year .... YUM !

So since the project involves the public school system you have to go do the rounds of blessings from various people and more importantly the department of education.
So you go and do your presentation rounds and the atmosphere is mostly reactionary... they will attack you on every front if they feel that you will curtail on their authority, reduce their income streams or be a serious competitor to anything on the market. On the other hand if you have a genuinely profitable idea that hasn't be implemented then you will certainly be blocked, without a reason or justification for that rejection. It's the attitude of "2i7na awla" (we deserve it more) that prevails.

By the way if anybody has the leverage to implement the idea, please make haste and hit the ground running. It's already in the pipeline.

ps. this was supposed to be one of those long posts that dissects things but it kinda never made it there.