Dubai: His Highness Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, on Sunday announced the launch of one of the largest development and community foundations in the Middle East region, to be called the ‘Mohammad Bin Rashid Global Initiatives’.
The new foundation consolidates the work of 28 organisations focusing on fighting poverty and illness; spreading knowledge and culture; empowering the community and driving innovation. The foundation’s initiatives will implement over 1,400 human development programmes in more than 116 countries around the world.
Commenting on the launch on Sunday, Shaikh Mohammad said, “The Arab region is undergoing massive challenges. We will not turn our backs on our region; we will provide our support and bring hope for our youth.”
He added: “The world today is facing great challenges on all levels; in terrorism, wars and mass immigration; and the only solution lies in human development which can be achieved by educating people and helping them build their future.”
The initiatives will target over 130 million people over the coming years and will focus its programmes in the Arab region. It will also launch the largest and most comprehensive development programme in the Arab region focusing on human development in an integrated manner, starting with providing basic human needs from health, fighting illiteracy and poverty through to providing knowledge, the dissemination of culture and the development of education.
It will work in parallel on developing a new generation of young Arab leaders, supporting real change in the area of good governance in the region and providing the largest incubator for Arab innovators, scientists and researchers.
The primary basic goals of the new foundation were announced, focusing on four main sectors: fighting poverty; dissemination of knowledge; community empowerment and innovation for the future.
The foundation will work on supporting and educating 20 million children and on the prevention and treatment of 30 million people from blindness and eye diseases until 2025. It will also invest Dh2 billion on establishing medical research centres and hospitals in the region. The initiatives include dedicating Dh500 million for research projects to address the need for concrete solutions to the water shortage issues of the region, a key challenge which will only intensify in decades to come.
The foundation will continue with its relief work and will empower more than 2 million families, enabling them to become self-sufficient within the next ten years. The new institution will also support young entrepreneurs in order to provide more than half a million jobs over the next few years.
In the field of spreading knowledge and science, and encouraging the translation of key works into Arabic, the foundation will work on printing and distributing more than 10 million books, and the translation of the top 25,000 titles from various languages to Arabic, as well as continuing with promoting a vibrant reading culture among school students.
The foundation will support programmes that aim to see more than 500 million books read over the next ten years across the Arab world. The investment in educational, knowledge, and scientific initiatives will total Dh1.5 billion to create real change in this sector.
The foundation will work within its overall development strategy on establishing a new culture in societies based on tolerance and cultural and civilisation openness. To achieve this goal, the foundation has dedicated more than Dh600 million to promote a transparent and lively media dialogue and also to enable communities to live in harmony, away from extremism, ethnic, religious or sectarian discrimination. Also, Dh150 million will be awarded to encourage creative people, intellectuals, and journalists to create cultural discourse based on empowering communities, enhancing their cohesion, and increasing their cultural creativity. The institution will target over 1 million participants in awards and forums related to community empowerment over the next 10 years.
As part of its overall vision to develop the region, the foundation will support innovation and scientists in the region by fostering 5,000 innovators and researchers and will invest more than Dh5.5 billion in building a world-standard environment for innovators in the region. This reflects Shaikh Mohammad’s belief that nations without innovation cease to evolve and build leadership of the future.
The foundation will also focus on fostering entrepreneurship by supporting and nurturing 50,000 young entrepreneurs and supporting the establishment of new companies that will provide 500,000 job opportunities in the region over the coming years.
The foundation will be managed by a Board of Trustees that includes representatives of all the organisations brought together by the new foundation. It will be chaired by Shaikh Mohammed who confirmed during the launch that
The foundation includes all programmes, institutions and awards launched by Shaikh Mohammad in the previous years. The annual operating budget for the new foundation is over Dh1 billion and it will work in general within 116 countries, focusing mainly on the Arab region within the coming period.
The foundation’s website, www.almaktouminitiatives.org, has further information regarding future goals, past achievements and the organisations and programmes which will combine under the foundation.
