ABU DHABI // Khawla Barley was seated in a coffee shop when her nine-year-old son Abdulla Al Mansouri arrived, leaned over and gently kissed his mother on the cheek.
“Hi, Abdulla,” Mrs Barley says, smiling.
Her son’s affectionate greeting is a fitting gesture for a parent who has worked tirelessly to ensure that autistic children such as Abdulla have more opportunities to immerse themselves in the Abu Dhabi community.
Mrs Barley founded and operates Goals UAE, a grassroots, not-for-profit voluntary organisation that partners with local institutions to offer children on the autism spectrum free or low-cost after-school arts, music and sports workshops.
“One reason why I think extra-curricular activities are important is that this is where most people figure out who they are, what they’re good at, where their passions lie, where their talents lie and what they’re not good at,” says Mrs Barley.
“Kids with autism are often very caught-up in school, then life, with a lot of therapy and support and sometimes their personality and their passions and what makes them who they are and what is going to give their life meaning gets lost.”
Before she was a champion of children with special needs, Mrs Barley studied conflict resolution and Middle Eastern studies at the University of Maryland. Her studies initially took her to Dubai for a three-month project in the late 1990s.
“I went out to dinner with my parents and I said, ‘I’m going to go to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates,’ and I remember when we came back to my parents’ house, my mother went to the atlas and her atlas didn’t actually have the UAE at the time. So, that Christmas, my father bought her a new atlas. That was before Dubai or anything was a big deal.”
She returned to the UAE a second time, this time for a project in Abu Dhabi.
“There were no malls in Abu Dhabi when I arrived. The mall was that co-op across from Abu Dhabi Mall,” Mrs Barley says. “There was nothing. But there was also no traffic. There was much less of everything then.”
Fewer people spoke English in the 90s and, Mrs Barley recalls, few, if any, women were seen working in the public sector. Still, she was charmed by Emirati hospitality.
“I found people very friendly and very nice,” says Mrs Barley.
She was also drawn to Islam. Once she settled here, she converted to Islam and adopted the tradition of wearing a black abaya and hijab.
“One thing that attracted me to Islam is the emphasis on learning,” says Mrs Barley. “And Islam is a religion that’s very structured in terms that it covers all aspects of you life.”
In Abu Dhabi, Mrs Barley found work as an elementary school teacher. Her circle of friends included Emirati sisters who introduced her to their brother, who would become Mrs Barley’s husband. They have three children, Safia, 13, Sarah, 11, and Abdulla.
Since it was launched in 2014, Goals UAE has hosted many workshops in partnership with institutions such as New York University Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi Arts and Music Festival, Emirates College for Advanced Education and ProActive Soccer School.
Mrs Barley estimates that several hundred children with autism have participated. She is hoping to find a sponsor who can help scale up Goals UAE programming so that more children can benefit.
“What the parents come back and say is a lot of the children were almost like phobic of sports because they’d been bullied or just all their sports experiences had been bad,” says Mrs Barley.
“Goals’ supportive environment gave them their chance to build their confidence, which gave them the chance to focus on building the skills so that now they can actually enjoy it.
“My hope is that now that they have the confidence and they see that they can gather skills, that then they can maybe transfer that back to school or, you know, playing with their cousins or maybe enrolling in another programme.”
rpennington@thenational.ae
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MATCH INFO
Liverpool 4 (Salah (pen 4, 33', & pen 88', Van Dijk (20')
Leeds United 3 (Harrison 12', Bamford 30', Klich 66')
Man of the match Mohamed Salah (Liverpool)
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.”
