The summer break in Kuwait is a season shared by several different groups: children and school students out of the classroom, university students between two academic years, and new graduates looking for a first work experience. During the summer of 2026, 12 companies listed in the Mnakh Sustainability Index delivered 50 educational and training activities aimed at these groups: 24 training programs and 26 single events.
This analysis does not stop at the count. It asks how the effort was distributed: who delivered it, in what format, whom it reached, and what can be said about its results. The answer comes in three observations: the effort is concentrated in two sectors and four companies; programs and events serve two different functions; and roughly a quarter of the activities pass through specialized organizations funded by the companies.
A Concentrated Effort
Of the twelve companies that delivered activities during the summer break, eight banks and three telecom operators together accounted for 47 of the 50 activities. Only three activities came from outside these two sectors, all of them from the Commercial Real Estate Company (Al Tijaria). The concentration is sharper still within the two sectors: National Bank of Kuwait, Kuwait Finance House and Zain delivered seven activities each, and Gulf Bank six. These four alone delivered 27 activities, more than half of the total.
The absence of the other 34 companies (out of the 46 in the index) from this tracking does not necessarily mean they were absent from the field. The tracking relies on what companies disclose, and what is not announced is not counted. Either way, the outcome is the same: what the public knows about listed companies' investment in students' summer comes from a quarter of the index.
The table below breaks down each company's activities by format. The counting unit is one activity per company, so a program announced at its launch and again at its conclusion is counted once.
| Company | Training programs | Single events | Focus |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kuwait Finance House | 5 | 2 | Vocational training, training for persons with disabilities, health and environment, children's workshops |
| Zain | 4 | 3 | Vocational training in branches, science and technology, social entrepreneurship |
| National Bank of Kuwait | 3 | 4 | Financial literacy, social entrepreneurship, academic and career guidance |
| Gulf Bank | 2 | 4 | Vocational training, school support for low-income families, welcoming students with disabilities |
| Commercial Bank of Kuwait | 1 | 4 | Science course for secondary students, school support for low-income families, career day |
| Boubyan Bank | 2 | 1 | Innovation and business skills for secondary students, food-waste awareness |
| stc Kuwait | 2 | 1 | Vocational training for university students, artificial intelligence workshop |
| Al Ahli Bank of Kuwait | 1 | 2 | Programs for employees' children, school support, welcoming university students |
| Commercial Real Estate (Al Tijaria) | 1 | 2 | Summer and cultural activities for children, sponsorship of a training fair |
| Ooredoo Kuwait | 1 | 1 | Vocational training for university students, event for students with disabilities |
| Burgan Bank | 1 | 1 | Banking training, national-memory awareness |
| Warba Bank | 1 | 1 | Banking training, recreational activity for children |
| Total | 24 | 26 |
Bank programs are similar in nature: vocational and banking training and financial literacy, in other words, their own line of business. Telecom operators add science, technology and artificial intelligence to vocational training. The exceptions come from the banks themselves: Kuwait Finance House supported an environmental sustainability camp and took part in a health-awareness camp for children, and Commercial Bank of Kuwait sponsored the 47th summer course of the Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research, attended by around 200 secondary students. The choice of field is sometimes driven by community need or the partner's expertise, rather than the funder's line of business.
Programs: Depth Cut to the Size of the Holiday
A program is an activity with a defined cohort, a set duration and sequenced content. Of the 24 programs, 18 disclosed their duration, and 17 of those lasted no more than five weeks. The only exception is Kuwait Finance House's sixth training program for persons with disabilities, which runs for three months starting in August. The holiday, then, is not merely the setting of the program; it is what sets its limits.
Programs also span a continuous age ladder: from National Bank of Kuwait's Little Bankers for employees' children aged six and above, through children's camps and programs for intermediate and secondary students, to training for university students and recent graduates at KFH Academy and Ooredoo Kuwait's Jeel O program.
Events: Breadth That Carries the Social Dimension
An event, by contrast, begins and ends within a day or a few days. The 26 events fall into five categories: eight academic and career guidance events, ranging from stands at training fairs and a career day with the Public Authority for Manpower to a campaign on overseas scholarships, all addressing students at the moment they choose their path; seven workshops, lectures and awareness campaigns on coding, artificial intelligence, financial fraud, food waste, national memory and drug prevention; five school-support initiatives for low-income families; three events welcoming students with disabilities and new university students; and three cultural and family events.
The most important thing the events reveal is that they were the widest route to the most vulnerable groups. Eight tracked activities reached low-income families or students with disabilities, and seven of them were single events: five school-support initiatives for low-income families and two events for students with disabilities. The eighth was a training program, the only one of the 24 programs to target either group: Kuwait Finance House's training program for persons with disabilities, which prepares eleven trainees for work over three months. Job-training programs select their participants through applications and interviews, so they rarely reach these groups unless they are designed for them, as Kuwait Finance House did. Events, on the other hand, reach those who never enter that selection at all.
A System Serving SDG 4
Thirteen of the 50 activities, roughly a quarter, were delivered through three specialized organizations: INJAZ Kuwait, LOYAC and CODED. Government and academic bodies joined them: the Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research, the Sabah Al-Ahmad Center for Giftedness and Creativity, the Ministries of Education and Higher Education, Kuwait University and the Public Authority for Applied Education and Training. Among programs specifically, six of the 24, a quarter, took the form of sponsorship or support: the company funds, and another party designs and delivers.
This pattern is what Sustainable Development Goal target 17.17 describes: partnerships between the public and private sectors and civil society. It carries both an advantage and a cost. The advantage is that delivery rests with those who have built up the methodology and the experience. The cost is that participation and completion data usually remain with the delivering organization, reaching the funding company only if it asks for them, and the public only if the company publishes them.
The activities sit at the heart of SDG 4, Quality Education. According to Mnakh's classification, 23 activities serve target 4.4 on skills for employment and entrepreneurship, nine serve target 4.5 on vulnerable groups and persons with disabilities, and eight serve target 4.7 on education for sustainable development. This classification is Mnakh's reading, not the companies' declaration: only three of the 50 activities were linked by their companies to a stated framework. All three cited New Kuwait Vision 2035, and one of them, Gulf Bank's school-bag campaign, also cited the Sustainable Development Goals.
Beyond the Summer
This analysis excluded three programs that were launched during the holiday but mostly delivered after it: Jazeera Airways' Irtiqaa program, which prepares Kuwaiti graduates for leadership roles over 18 to 24 months; the third cohort of the NBK Tech Academy for new graduates in technical disciplines, a six-month program launched on 7 September; and ON Academy, launched by National Bank of Kuwait and Ooredoo Kuwait at the end of August for young people aged 22 to 30.
The three share two features: they are aimed at graduates, and they begin where the holiday ends. If summer programs are an entry point where young people first encounter the workplace, these programs are the next stage, preparing graduates for the job itself. They fall outside this count because their timeline is not the summer's, but they complete its picture: companies' investment in young people does not stop with the summer.
Conclusion
What took place in summer 2026 was not a string of scattered initiatives but a structured community investment: programs that deepen the skills of those selected for them, events that reach those outside the circle of selection, and specialized organizations that deliver what companies fund. Yet it is an investment with a narrow base, carried by twelve of forty-six companies, four of which carry more than half of it.
Methodology: This analysis draws on activities tracked and approved in the Mnakh database for the 46 companies listed in the Mnakh Sustainability Index, as of 27 September 2026. The period covered runs from 11 June to 13 September 2026; an activity was counted if most of it was delivered while its target group was on holiday. Youth activities were defined as those classified under “Community Investment and Social Impact” or “Education and Sustainability Awareness” and aimed at students, young people, children, trainees or recent graduates, each with a published source. Excluded were ceremonies honoring top-ranking students, activities announced during the holiday but delivered after it, and activities announced after the holiday without evidence that they were delivered within it. Details of the methodology, the activity table and its sources are available from Mnakh on request.
