A Dubai centre where disabled youngsters can learn how to make robots and a teacher who is getting his pupils excited about learning Arabic were among the winners in this year’s Khalifa Award for Education.
The award, now in its ninth year, singled out educators across the Arab world who go beyond the call of duty to promote knowledge and innovation.
Among them was Jamal Chahoud, a Grade One teacher in Arabic and Islamic studies at Al Bwadi Primary School in the capital.
Mr Chahoud was awarded for his work in making children feel excited about learning and perfecting their native tongue.
The secret to his success, he said, was simple – he added a little competition to his classes, and a prize.
At the end of each week, Mr Chahoud holds an Arabic reading contest, and the best performing pupil takes home the now much-coveted Arabic Language Knight Cup.
“This has encouraged the children to love Arabic and to make the parents get excited too when they take the cup home,” said the teacher, who holds a BA in Arabic language from the University of Aleppo, a doctorate in human resources and is a winner of the Sharjah Voluntary Work Award.
Developing a programme that enabled children with special needs to make robots helped make the Dubai Handicap Rehabilitation Centre an award winner.
“This is the first initiative of its kind worldwide, and we are planning to register it as our own invention,” said Ayesha Al Darbi, the centre’s manager.
“We have many initiatives coming up in 2017, like a garden designed 100 per cent for special-needs students,” said Ms Al Darbi. “It will be established by Dubai Municipality. We are also building a sensory gym.”
The education personality of the year award was presented to Saeed bin Lootah for establishing many projects and businesses in the region since 1956.
These included the first construction company in Dubai, Lootah Construction Company, and the first Islamic bank in the world, Dubai Islamic Bank, in 1975.
Mr bin Lootah also established the Dubai Pharmacy College for Girls in 1992 and the Dubai Centre for Environmental Research.
Chosen from 600 nominees, the 37 individuals and institutions named winners at this year’s event were presented with their awards by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Presidential Affairs, and Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak, Minister of Culture, at Etihad Towers on Thursday.
“We in the UAE value education and place it at the top of our national priorities, care and support,” Sheikh Mansour said.
“We also provide the resources required to develop its content, improve the learning environment and support educators in light of the leadership’s belief in the core role that education plays in building the human being – the engine of development, bedrock of security, source of national treasures and our prime force towards a more prosperous, happier and pioneering future.”
Also among those honoured was Dr Ahmad Al Jefri, who was recognised for his work to improve the poor reading habits of children.
“It is our fault that children are not fond of reading, because we are not providing something interesting and imaginative for them,” said Dr Al Jefri, a haematologist and transfusion medicine consultant from Saudi Arabia who has written books for youngsters and is working on a project to explain to sick children their condition through storytelling.
Mohammed Khalil, 45, a teacher from Egypt, was praised for his work with special-needs pupils as well as youngsters excluded from schools. His efforts have grown into a programme spread across his home country’s east-coast region.
hdajani@thenational.ae
HEADLINE HERE
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Profile of Hala Insurance
Date Started: September 2018
Founders: Walid and Karim Dib
Based: Abu Dhabi
Employees: Nine
Amount raised: $1.2 million
Funders: Oman Technology Fund, AB Accelerator, 500 Startups, private backers
COMPANY%20PROFILE
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Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
360Vuz PROFILE
Date started: January 2017
Founder: Khaled Zaatarah
Based: Dubai and Los Angeles
Sector: Technology
Size: 21 employees
Funding: $7 million
Investors: Shorooq Partners, KBW Ventures, Vision Ventures, Hala Ventures, 500Startups, Plug and Play, Magnus Olsson, Samih Toukan, Jonathan Labin
Banthology: Stories from Unwanted Nations
Edited by Sarah Cleave, Comma Press
Islamophobia definition
A widely accepted definition was made by the All Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims in 2019: “Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness.” It further defines it as “inciting hatred or violence against Muslims”.
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Gertrude Bell's life in focus
A feature film
At one point, two feature films were in the works, but only German director Werner Herzog’s project starring Nicole Kidman would be made. While there were high hopes he would do a worthy job of directing the biopic, when Queen of the Desert arrived in 2015 it was a disappointment. Critics panned the film, in which Herzog largely glossed over Bell’s political work in favour of her ill-fated romances.
A documentary
A project that did do justice to Bell arrived the next year: Sabine Krayenbuhl and Zeva Oelbaum’s Letters from Baghdad: The Extraordinary Life and Times of Gertrude Bell. Drawing on more than 1,000 pieces of archival footage, 1,700 documents and 1,600 letters, the filmmakers painstakingly pieced together a compelling narrative that managed to convey both the depth of Bell’s experience and her tortured love life.
Books, letters and archives
Two biographies have been written about Bell, and both are worth reading: Georgina Howell’s 2006 book Queen of the Desert and Janet Wallach’s 1996 effort Desert Queen. Bell published several books documenting her travels and there are also several volumes of her letters, although they are hard to find in print. Original documents are housed at the Gertrude Bell Archive at the University of Newcastle, which has an online catalogue.
