Qatar’s Social Development Center (Nama) has launched the third edition of its Social Entrepreneurship Award, offering a combined QAR 360,000 ($98,900) in prizes to entrepreneurs, young people and students developing sustainable solutions to social challenges.

Operating under the Qatar Foundation for Social Work, Nama has structured the initiative around two main categories: Best Social Entrepreneurship Idea and Best Existing Social Enterprise Project. A separate Social Entrepreneurship Competition will target secondary school students.

The Best Social Entrepreneurship Idea winner will receive QAR 100,000, while the Best Existing Social Enterprise Project carries a QAR 200,000 prize. Another QAR 60,000 will be distributed among winners of the boys’ and girls’ categories in the secondary school competition.

Beyond the financial awards, the third edition introduces an intensive training program for shortlisted participants, designed to help founders better understand community problems, refine their solutions and build projects capable of delivering measurable and sustainable impact.

Nama Adds Training to Turn Social Ideas Into Viable Ventures

The award is designed to encourage entrepreneurship focused on solving social problems rather than building businesses around commercial opportunity alone.

Ghanem Salah Al Ali, Executive Director of Nama, said the initiative is one of the center’s tools for enabling individuals and entrepreneurs to develop practical solutions grounded in actual community needs.

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The new training component will take shortlisted applicants through a more structured venture-development process. Participants will work on understanding the social challenges they are targeting before developing solutions that can be implemented sustainably and whose impact can be measured.

That approach is particularly relevant to social entrepreneurship, where a promising social mission does not necessarily translate into a sustainable organisation. Ventures still need workable operating models, clear beneficiaries and the ability to demonstrate that their interventions produce meaningful results.

Entries will consequently be evaluated on several dimensions, including the clarity of the social challenge, relevance of the proposed solution, expected impact, feasibility, sustainability, scalability and measurable results.

QAR 300,000 Targets Ideas and Existing Social Enterprises

Nama has separated entrepreneurs into categories reflecting different stages of development.

The QAR 100,000 Best Social Entrepreneurship Idea category gives founders at an earlier stage an opportunity to develop concepts before they become established organisations. The QAR 200,000 Best Existing Social Enterprise Project category targets ventures that have already moved into implementation.

The structure allows the award to support both experimentation and existing projects seeking to expand their impact.

Nama said it has also worked with partners to identify and study a number of community challenges. Those findings will provide entrepreneurs with potential areas where practical solutions are needed, connecting venture development more directly with issues affecting communities in Qatar.

The center launched the first edition of the award in 2024. The Families of People with Autism Platform won the Best Existing Project category, while the Central Canteen Project took the Best Project Idea award.

Nama said experience from the first two editions demonstrated the potential for entrepreneurial ideas to generate tangible social value, contributing to the decision to continue developing the initiative.

Secondary Schools Bring Social Entrepreneurship to Younger Founders

Nama is also extending the concept of entrepreneurship beyond established and aspiring founders through its secondary school competition.

The school category was introduced during the award’s second edition and attracted 31 schools. It returns this year with QAR 60,000 in total prizes divided between winning boys’ and girls’ categories.

Rather than focusing exclusively on launching conventional businesses, the competition is intended to introduce students to identifying social problems and designing sustainable solutions around them.

That can expose students to entrepreneurial thinking at an earlier stage, particularly the process of defining a problem, testing whether a proposed intervention addresses it and considering how an initiative could remain viable over time.

The combination of the school competition and the two main entrepreneur categories gives Nama a wider pipeline ranging from students encountering social entrepreneurship for the first time to founders already operating social enterprises.

Qatar Expands Support for Impact-Driven Entrepreneurship

The third edition arrives as Qatar continues developing an entrepreneurship ecosystem that extends beyond conventional technology startups and investment-driven ventures.

Social enterprises occupy a different part of that ecosystem, combining entrepreneurial methods with objectives such as improving community services or addressing specific societal challenges. Measuring success can therefore involve both financial sustainability and demonstrable social outcomes.

Nama’s decision to combine cash prizes, training and problem identification is intended to address both sides of that equation.

For existing projects, QAR 200,000 could provide additional resources to improve or scale an established model. For earlier-stage entrepreneurs, the QAR 100,000 category and accompanying training offer a route from identifying a social problem toward building a more structured venture around it.

Applications for the third edition can be submitted through Nama’s official channels.

With QAR 360,000 in total prizes and a stronger emphasis on training, sustainability and measurable results, the latest edition is positioning social entrepreneurship as another pathway for founders and young people seeking to build ventures around challenges facing Qatar’s communities.