Jeddah, Asharq Al-Awsat- The Charitable Society for Encouraging Youth Marriage and Family Direction has received a record number of requests from young people looking to find marriage partners. This has forced the Society to launch a department specializing in organizing and matching personal profiles of young men and women requesting marriage partners. This department employees 8 staff members and has so far received 1500 personal profiles and marriage requests from individuals wishing to get married.
The Charitable Society now also assists young people in Jeddah to find marriage partners – along with its other work – and has initiated a matchmaking program that matches between the requests made by young men and women wishing to get married with regards to their ideal partner. This department has received 1500 requests in just its first six months of operation.
Fahd al-Bashari, the director of this department of the Charitable Society for Encouraging Youth Marriage and Family Direction said that “this department was established about 6 months ago. It has received many marriage requests, and daily receives a large amount of communication from both sexes asking for help in finding a marriage partner, and the team looks through these requests and [helps to] overcome obstacles between the two parties.”
He said that “some of the requests are exaggerated, and the team attempts to overcome this by matching individuals with similar ages and social situations, while also helping others to waive some of their prohibitive requests [with regards to a marriage partner].”
Al-Bashari also stated that “the program enjoys wide acceptance, and some families have submitted applications to obtain marriage partners for all their daughters, and this includes a family comprising five daughters. There are also women who are over the age of thirty or forty [seeking marriage partners], some of whom hold academic qualifications.”
He also confirmed “the presence of a contact number for girls to record their wishes [with regards to a potential marriage partner], while this project requires that male applicants submit their requests in person.”
Al-Bashari said that “a large number of applicants have married after their papers were sufficiently studied and they questioned – and this is something required by the program – to ensure that the young man is of good moral character.”
As for the most prominent cases of marriage arranged by the department, al-Bashari said “there are many cases, but the most prominent one is the story of a young man who could not find a wife because of his poor [financial] prospects at the time. However another family put a marriage request for their daughter and an agreement was made between them, with the father of the bride providing his son-in-law with an apartment due to his financial circumstances, and this marriage took place with a dowry of one thousand riyals.”
The Governor of Jeddah, Prince Mishaal bin Majed Bin Abdulaziz met with members of the Charitable Society for
Encouraging Youth Marriage and Family Direction on Saturday, including the Executive Director of the Society Abdullah Abu Hussein, along with President of the Mecca Court of Cassation Abdul-Mohsen Bin Abdullah al-Khayyal, Sheikh Daoud Bin Ahmed al-Alwani, Sheikh Anas Bin Abdul-Wahab Zaraa, and Dr. Mohamed al-Shanqiti.
Sheikh Abdul-Mohsen al-Khayyal reviewed the work of the Charitable Society for Encouraging Youth Marriage and Family Direction, saying that it had provided social work and assistance to young men and women looking to marry over the past year. The Society was able to assist in 3,950 marriages of young men and women, as well as helping to socially and psychologically prepare 2,720 young men and women for married life. The society also provided financial assistance to newly married couples amounting to a total of 22 million and 854 thousand riyals, along with a special charity for furnishing new marriage apartments that provided 5.8 million riyals of assistance.