Campaign to educate UAE's long history

Abu Dhabi: A campaign will soon be launched under the theme "Home of History, Future's Nation", to introduce great discoveries to the largest possible number of UAE residents.

The campaign will bring in a documentary featuring "rich archaeological findings that will fascinate the world, change the course of history and provide a clear evidence that the history of humanity on the UAE's soil does not go back several years, as it is thought, but tracks back to more than 150,000 years", Ammar Al Haj Ali, PR and communication manager at Anasy Media Production, said at a press conference in Abu Dhabi yesterday.

The campaign, which will be launched with the cooperation of the UAE Architectural Heritage Society in two weeks, will last for three months. It will reinforce the UAE's vision aiming at educating the society and raising people's awareness about their national identity.

The campaign will see the distribution of the documentary to schools, universities, federal and local governmental departments, cultural institutions, civil society associations, foreign embassies and diplomatic missions in the UAE to make sure it reaches the largest number of people — whether nationals or expatriates.

Academic lectures and seminars in UAE universities will be organised and educational field trips to various archaeological sites in the country will be planned as part of this campaign.

Ahmad Al Ennab, general manager of the Architectural Heritage Society, said that currently "AHS is restoring and furnishing historic buildings, and preparing the first map of its kind in the UAE that demonstrates the national historic and archaeological sites in both Arabic and English. Furthermore, AHS is preparing a comprehensive educational curriculum for preserving the UAE's heritage that would be added to the Ministry of Education's curriculum".