Philanthropy

The family of Abdul Aziz Al Ghurair, CEO of Mashreq, has played a significant part in supporting education in the UAE for decades, and the new programmes being managed under the Al Ghurair Foundation continue that tradition. Even before the UAE was established, Abdul Aziz’s father, Abdullah Al Ghurair built a school in Masafi in the 1960s because he had a farm there and wanted to do something for the community.

“This was the first rural school in the country, and the first co-ed school in the country, and people accepted sending their daughters and sons to a co-ed school because there was only one school in Masafi. Some of the leaders we see today in the UAE, are graduates of Masafi School.

“My father did not talk about it, and I myself did not know till recently, but he built four schools, which he handed over to the government to be state schools. He built the infrastructure and facilities and then the government took over. The one in Rashidiya is still ranked in the top five state schools in Dubai by quality of outcome, and is a model school for Dubai,” Al Ghurair said.

This tradition has carried forward to the new programmes that the Al Ghurair Foundation has started in supporting low-income UAE and Arab students through university. “We are working to give high quality university opportunities to high achiever UAE nationals and Arabs. We have also recognised the trauma that some of our Arab countries are going through so we gave higher score if you were a refugee. One of our applicants from a refugee camp made it to McGill. There are gems under the sand,” said Al Ghurair.

Last year the foundation received 55,000 applicants for scholarships from UAE nationals and other Arab nationals from across the Arab world and in its first year it celebrated giving 770 scholarships to go to leading universities in the UAE like AUS, AUD, Khalifa University, as well as others in the US and Canada in universities like MIT, McGill, Waterloo and Montreal. The foundation only gives scholarships to STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, mathematics), as they are the most critical subjects for the UAE, and finance will be added later.

The second strand of the foundation’s activities is on studying over the internet and the third deals with upskilling UAE nationals by preparing them for college. Al Ghurair added that his foundation is working with the Ministry of Education to endorse the foundation’s programme.