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Fatima awarded EWI’s leadership award

ABU DHABI - Sheikha Fatima Bint Mubarak, the Chairwoman of the UAE General Women’s Union (GWU), and of Family Development Foundation (FDF), has been awarded the Values Based Leadership Award by the US EastWest Institute in recognition of her incessant and consistent support for the UAE woman.

The trophy was received on behalf of Sheikha Fatima by H.H. Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the Foreign Minister, in a glittering award-giving ceremony held at the Emirates Palace today.

The function was attended by Dr. Sultan Al Jaber, Assistant to UAE Foreign Minister for Climate Change and Energy and CEO of Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company (Masdar), John Edwin Mroz, EWI President and CEO, Haifa Al Kaylani, Founder and Chairman of the Arab International Women’s Forum, and a crowd of Arab and foreign diplomats. Addressing the attendees, Sheikh Abdullah said “It is a great honour for me to receive the prestigious award from such a world renown organisation on behalf of my mother, the Mother of the Nation, who has been very close to the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan”. He affirmed that the honour is a tribute to what Sheikha Fatima is doing and an appreciation of the progress the UAE woman has reached. John Edwin Mroz, EWI President and CEO, said the achievements Sheikha Fatima has made is an embodiment of the leadership values as she recognised the importance of advancement of woman as a prerequisite for the progress of the nation.

He also acknowledged the vital role of Sheikh Zayed and his special care and attention for the woman issues.

He indicated that Sheikha Fatima had rolled out a massive programme for learning girls because she views illiteracy as the first stumbling block before the path to progress.

He went on to note that Sheikha Fatima’s role has gone beyond the UAE borders to the Arab and international arenas as she didn’t forget the sufferings of the peoples in Palestine, Iraq, Pakistan and Kosovo. She, he added, carried out several humanitarian projects through the UAE Red Crescent Authority.

He added that Sheikha Fatima is also working through the FDF to take care of woman and children and advance their issues without compromising values and culture of the local family. The FDF is offering through 17 centres educational and sports programmes at affordable fees. The EastWest Institute is a global think-and-do tank that devises innovative solutions to pressing security concerns and mobilizes networks of individuals, institutions and nations to implement these solutions. EWI was founded in 1980 when John Edwin Mroz and Ira Wallach set out to bridge divides across the Iron Curtain. With vast networks in political, military, and business establishments in the U.S., Europe, and the former Soviet Union, EWI quickly established a reputation as a trusted convener with the ability to maintain lines of communication across divides when official channels failed to do so.

The EastWest Institute is a non-partisan, non-profit organization with offices in New York, Brussels and Moscow.