Saayda initiates community-owned development in Saudi Arabias slums. For years, the country's wealthy elite used charity to hide poverty. Saadya saw that sustained development required much more: the participation of slum inhabitants. Saayda creates "civil district councils," structures allowing marginalized communities to define and meet their own needs through the involvement of community leaders, local government officials, donors such as sheikhs, and volunteers. Saayda, the first Saudi woman to found a community-based civil society organization in the country, is also pioneering a new level of community mobilization towards development and a heightened awareness throughout the country of a problem kept largely out of sight.