Bahrain's Skills Story: A Chef, an Artist and a Coder

The world marks World Youth Skills Day today, and Bahrain has three names that say it all.

TDT | Manama

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Tala Bashmi traded football for a kitchen and became the first female chef to win the Middle East and North Africa's Best Female Chef award in 2022, and the first woman to claim its Chefs' Choice Award — the only prize voted for by fellow chefs. Talent, she proved, grows where passion is fed.

Huda Almarzooq has drawn since she was five. That childhood habit became a following of millions online and artwork displayed at the Dubai headquarters of one of the world's largest social media platforms — one of only two Middle Eastern creators to earn that honour.

Yousif Alsayyad took cybersecurity to Shenzhen, China, last month and returned with First Prize in the Network Track of a global tech competition drawing over 220,000 participants from 100 countries.

The United Nations warns that 40 percent of today's skillsets no longer match job market needs and 22 percent of jobs will change by 2030. Bahrain's answer is already visible — in a kitchen, a canvas, and a line of code.

A chef, an artist and a cybersecurity student. Three different paths, one shared lesson. Skills are not certificates gathering dust in a drawer. They are a football rolled into a kitchen, a childhood sketch carried to Dubai, a Bahraini name read out before 100 countries. Today the world celebrates that idea. Bahrain, it seems, has been celebrating it all along.