DUBAI // Mina Liccione knows all about the power of laughter.
The Dubai-based comedian and philanthropist started the volunteer performing arts project Clowns who Care with her husband, fellow comedian Ali Al Sayed, in 2009 to put on performances for people with special needs, the elderly and hospital patients.
This week she won US$5,000 to help fund the group as part of the "Spread Some Inspiration" campaign, a partnership between UN Women and Philadelphia Cream Cheese.
Ms Liccione, the competition's runner-up, said it felt selfish to win an award for helping others.
"They're really the ones who help me," she said, and urged other women to take up good deeds. "You don't need a lot of money, it's OK. You have talent and passion."
The award's US$10,000 first prize was won by American Sheryll Mairza, who founded Operation Hope, a humanitarian organisation that serves Kuwait's migrant workers.
Started in 2004 and originally run out of a tent in Ms Mairza's yard, it now serves about 1,000 people monthly and has more than 25 regular volunteers. They provide whatever is needed: clothing, food, toiletries, bedrolls, medical aid.
Ms Mairza moved to the Gulf 20 years ago, following her Kuwaiti husband to his homeland, and was inspired to start the charity after a chance encounter with a gaunt janitor dressed in a threadbare clothes one cold winter day - temperatures in Kuwait can fall below zero.
"I made the decision that day that I was in Kuwait for a bigger purpose than just being married to a Kuwaiti," said Ms Mairza, 50.
She returned to give the man warm clothing and food. Soon after, she founded Operation Hope.
Ms Mairza said that her work is its own reward.
For one woman, an Ethiopian domestic worker who fell from a third-story balcony and lost an arm, Operation Hope provided a prosthetic arm, physical therapy and "seed money to go home and start her life anew," Ms Mairza said.
And last year, Ms Mairza helped organise a brief homecoming for a Filipino domestic worker who was terminally ill with cancer. The woman had spent a decade with one family and her sponsor did not want to say goodbye, unwilling to let her go.
"Her desire was to go home and die in her own land," Ms Mairza said.
After "some conversation and a lot of prayer," the sponsor paid for the maid's flight home, Ms Mairza said.
"She was home about three weeks and died there," she said. "But she was able to be home, and that was a blessing for us."
[ vnereim@thenational.ae ]
KEY DATES IN AMAZON'S HISTORY
July 5, 1994: Jeff Bezos founds Cadabra Inc, which would later be renamed to Amazon.com, because his lawyer misheard the name as 'cadaver'. In its earliest days, the bookstore operated out of a rented garage in Bellevue, Washington
July 16, 1995: Amazon formally opens as an online bookseller. Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought becomes the first item sold on Amazon
1997: Amazon goes public at $18 a share, which has grown about 1,000 per cent at present. Its highest closing price was $197.85 on June 27, 2024
1998: Amazon acquires IMDb, its first major acquisition. It also starts selling CDs and DVDs
2000: Amazon Marketplace opens, allowing people to sell items on the website
2002: Amazon forms what would become Amazon Web Services, opening the Amazon.com platform to all developers. The cloud unit would follow in 2006
2003: Amazon turns in an annual profit of $75 million, the first time it ended a year in the black
2005: Amazon Prime is introduced, its first-ever subscription service that offered US customers free two-day shipping for $79 a year
2006: Amazon Unbox is unveiled, the company's video service that would later morph into Amazon Instant Video and, ultimately, Amazon Video
2007: Amazon's first hardware product, the Kindle e-reader, is introduced; the Fire TV and Fire Phone would come in 2014. Grocery service Amazon Fresh is also started
2009: Amazon introduces Amazon Basics, its in-house label for a variety of products
2010: The foundations for Amazon Studios were laid. Its first original streaming content debuted in 2013
2011: The Amazon Appstore for Google's Android is launched. It is still unavailable on Apple's iOS
2014: The Amazon Echo is launched, a speaker that acts as a personal digital assistant powered by Alexa
2017: Amazon acquires Whole Foods for $13.7 billion, its biggest acquisition
2018: Amazon's market cap briefly crosses the $1 trillion mark, making it, at the time, only the third company to achieve that milestone
What is a calorie?
A food calorie, or kilocalorie, is a measure of nutritional energy generated from what is consumed.
One calorie, is the amount of heat needed to raise the temperature of 1 kilogram of water by 1°C.
A kilocalorie represents a 1,000 true calories of energy.
Energy density figures are often quoted as calories per serving, with one gram of fat in food containing nine calories, and a gram of protein or carbohydrate providing about four.
Alcohol contains about seven calories a gram.