A 75-Year legacy
Moving Ever Forward for Future Generations
Our Founder's Legacy
Our 75th anniversary year focused on honouring our Founder, Suliman S. Olayan, and his vision to create and safeguard lasting benefits and opportunities for future generations. Our Founder believed in empowering people with education, skill-sets and opportunities, so that their ideas and innovations may continue to serve generations to come.
75th Anniversary Initiatives
We celebrated our 75th year by focusing our initiatives on the following four pillars that contribute to the long-term benefit of our communities in various ways.
HEALTH
Our Founder placed great importance on health initiatives due to the immeasurable impact they may have on the quality of life of both patients and their families. Having lived during a time when ophthalmic diseases caused preventable blindness for many, he was especially passionate about supporting ophthalmic causes.
OUR HEALTH INITIATIVE
12 Retinopathy Screening Devices:
We contributed 12 Ret-Cam Digital cameras in support of the Ministry of Health’s Retinopathy of Prematurity National Program, administered by King Khaled Eye Specialist Hospital. These screening devices have been disseminated to all MoH centers Kingdom-wide and will help prevent over 400 newborns from going blind every year due to misdiagnosis.
EDUCATION
Another area our Founder was passionate about is education; he believed in the profoundly positive impact education can have on multiple generations and its potential to provide the skills necessary to cultivate resiliency and independence, empower individuals, and lift communities as a whole.
OUR EDUCATION INITIATIVES
The SSO Institute at KAUST:
The groundbreaking for the Suliman S. Olayan Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship took place at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology; the Institute’s focus is to support innovators and entrepreneurs in their endeavors and to contribute to the betterment of the Kingdom and beyond.
75 Scholarships:
We sponsored the higher education of 75 deserving underprivileged students throughout the Kingdom.
ENVIRONMENT
In light of our current planetary state, and in pursuit of our Founder’s vision to safeguard the wellbeing of our communities and to contribute to a better future for the coming generations, we felt it incumbent upon ourselves to support truly impactful efforts that focus on tackling our environmental crisis and bringing balance back into the natural world.
OUR ENVIRONMENTAL INITIATIVE
A Million Mangroves:
Chosen for their many benefits such as high carbon sequestering capabilities and immense contribution to biodiversity, we planted 1M mangroves off the coast of Jizan. This number of mangroves is estimated to offset 25k tons of CO2 per year.
CULTURE
With Saudi bees becoming an endangered species as of late, and the current rate of bees being imported, we felt an emerging need to bring our native environment back into the fold and re-engage our natural resources to provide for our communities. We aim to work with local artisans to support this cause and facilitate the revitalization of local traditions and dwindling bee populations thus laying the foundation for a rich cultural heritage that we hope will be passed down for generations to come.
OUR CULTURE INITIATIVE
Educational Program for Local Artisans:
This is a year-long educational program on beeswax products for twelve local artisans through which they are trained in sustainable practices and how to fully utilize beeswax by-products that would otherwise be discarded.
Through applying a novel approach to an existing local industry and establishing a culture of zero-waste production, this initiative will continue to benefit local businesses, diversify the range of local products and generate a wealth of local content.