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Daily CSR

Daily CSR
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UAE Pavilion Recounts The Story Of Emirates’ Journey From Hardship To Innovative Solutions



08/31/2015

The exhibition at UAE pavilion offers an insight into their culture and the ingenuous way they have tackled numerous problems that almost endangered their lives.


Dailycsr.com – 21 August 2015 – Mahra Mustafa, a nine year old girl, has become Expo Milan’s heartthrob. She has come to be known as Sara, a character she portrayed in a short film “The Family Tree. It about the heritage of UAE and is “being screened at the United Arab Emirates pavilion”. The young celebrity now represents the “dynamic and innovative Emirates”. People from all over the world come to visit the pavilion of UAE, wherein they are spellbound by the “rippled walls” twelve meter in length which displays the talents of UAE and provides a glimpse of what wait from the Emirates “during the Dubai Expo in 2020”.
 
The Expo of Dubai is scheduled to last from 20th of October till the 10th of April 2021, wherein UAE will celebrate its golden jubilee year. The website of the event posts saying the platform will:
“...serve as a springboard from which to inaugurate a progressive and sustainable vision for the coming decades”.
 
In fact, the event organisers made an announcement wherein they stated that:
“This will be the first time that a World Expo is staged in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia (MENASA) region.”
 
While, the Exhibition that is being held at Milan has its theme as ‘Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life’, the Dubai Expo will focus on ‘Connecting Minds, Creating the Future’ which will reinforce the spirit of UAE, whereby it has climbed the ladder of success in discover new summits of “development and innovation” with the support of powerful co-operation and partnership. Moreover, the organisers add:
“Through this theme, Expo 2020 Dubai will serve as a catalyst, connecting minds from around the world and inspiring participants to mobilise around shared challenges during a World Expo of unprecedented global scope”.
 
The architects involved in the UAE Expo worked hard in collaboration with “UAE’s National Media Council” whereby to establish the link with the reigning theme. However, The Nation Newspaper noted that:
“Many were surprised to see the country with not much water, how people searched for food. Then suddenly they see videos of the Burj Khalifa (a skyscraper in Dubai) and they are thrilled. Even people who have been to Dubai long ago want to see the changes”.
 
Masdar’s director of sustainability, Nawal Al Hosany, who has also active in creating UAE pavilion, informed the newspaper:
“People get mesmerised with how the UAE has grown from facing challenges like lack of water, coping with heat, humidity, lack of natural resources and still managed to create beautiful cities and communities”.
 
As mentioned in the beginning, the movie, “The Family Tree” is the highlight of the event wherein, the character Sara gets “transported back in time”. Likewise, she is introduced to the time of her grandparents’ generation, whereby she lives with them witnessing their lifestyle as a testimony of time before the magic wand of “modernisation and development” transformed the land with the swing of time. Life then was harsh amid desert conditions which brought in its train of challenges like water and food scarcity along with ever looming sand storms and wild animals that threatened the very existence of the clan. In fact, the Gulf News justifies that:
“The movie’s special effects, story, and professional direction is on par with any Hollywood major production”.
 
Besides the storyline, there are other features of the movie and what follows it captivates the audience. Altogether, the pavilion establishes the role of dates in their life and culture which exposes:
“...its form, fruit, hydration, metamorphosis, shade and shadow”.
 
The exhibition also projects twelve different challenges through “media cubes” which the Emirates face and the way they tackle with them, which includes the availability of water, food, energy and land. The solutions involve innovative technology like desalination of brackish water through renewable energy.