Directors
 Dick Parleviet, Chairman
I am glad I was able to be one of the founders of Arab-West Foundation. It was founded in 2005, to support Kees Hulsman and Sawsan Gabra's work on their electronic magazine Arab-West Report. AWF was first led by the dynamic Ayad Mossad who made a great contribution to the founding and development of the organization but unfortunately had to withdraw for health reasons. Thus since 2007 I have been the chair. Kees Hulsman and Sawsan Gabra were first introduced to me through one of my business visits to Egypt in 2000.
They have struggled to realize their goal of better understanding between Muslims and Christians, and the Arab world and the West. What they have been able to achieve since they came to Egypt in 1994 is truly amazing. Their achievements have not come easy. They started building a weekly electronic newsletter without the support of any outside organization. It was only in 2001 that they started to receive financial support from a European organization. This support was good but was also not enough to build a professional electronic database for all data collected. They thus had to turn toward a much cheaper but also much less qualified Egyptian developer. That decision was the best they could have made with the limited funding they had at their disposal. Now they can show the world the data they have; over 22,000 articles and reports, almost all unique material that is not available anywhere else, giving the reader a magnificent insight into the many discussions that are taking place in the Arab media which shows how diverse discussions are, contrary to how they are often presented in the Western media.
From my own business experience I know that working in Egypt is not easy. I owned a lighting company that supplied the lighting for many prominent businesses in Egypt, such as the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, and there is a lot of red-tape, a lot of big-talk that is not lived up to and a lot of focus on short-term gains. Qualified personnel are also hard to find which makes it difficult for any small or medium sized business in Egypt to develop. Furthermore Egyptians often want organizations to be partisan, one-sidedly supporting them without realizing that an independent organization is so much more effective to challenge misperceptions in the West that certainly exist. For example, it took Kees Hulsman and Sawsan Gabra four years of hard work to obtain NGO status for the Center for Arab-West Understanding in Egypt. The circumstances in Egypt do not make it at all easy to develop such a much needed initiative. I admire Kees Hulsman and Sawsan Gabra for their persistence to develop their work which has seen slow but persistent growth and impact over the years.
So, visit this website, visit Arab-West Report, their electronic magazine where their huge and ever growing database is kept and visit the other websites linked to the Intercultural Dialogue Group.
Dick Parlevliet
Raalte, The Netherlands
Email: board@arabwestfoundation.com
 Martin Schipper, Secretary
My name is Martin Schipper and i'm the secretary of the foundation. I'm from the Netherlands and involved in the foundation because of it's importance. I believe that all together we can make the world's attitude to change into a better one.
These days it's very important that the West and the Arab world get to know eachother better. Since I lived in Egypt for a couple of months some years back I got interested in the Middle East. It's sometimes very hard to understand what is going on there. Even if you are in the middle of it. I'm not talking about war or violance, but just daily life. Things are different in the West and the Arab World and one thing that's very important in partnership is acceptance and understanding from both sides. I found that one major burden in understanding each other is the fact that language is different. But also religion is something we need to learn about.
AWF is focusing on these subjects and more. I truly hope that you will get to know the Arab World and the West better through the efforts of the AWF.
 Koen Vliegenthart, Treasurer
Koen was born in Rotterdam, Holland, in 1953. After retiring as Financial Director of Zeeman textielSupers, Koen spends his time supporting a number of charity organisations, most involved in projects in developing countries, like Oikocredit (microfinancing) and Save the Children India (Mumbai). He also has his own foundation, called 'Elishua' which supports small projects in the Dominican Republic, Ghana, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. In Egypt Koen has worked with World Servants, an organisation that organises three-week working vacations for mostly students during summertime and his been involved in the construction of many girls homes and schools in the the past decade, mostly in the Beni Suef region. It was through this work that Koen came in contact with Kees Hulsman and his organisation and became (and still is) very enthusiastic about their ideas and goals. That is the reason why Koen joined the Arab West Stichting.
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