Emirates Foundation today hosted its first Business Breakfast Forum for Social Investment for 2022 at the Anantara Eastern Mangroves – Abu Dhabi, as part of its new strategy focus to build more resilient communities across the UAE through collaboration with government entities and private sector partners by developing innovative solutions that tackle issues that have an environmental, social and economic impact on society as a whole.
The Forum focused on the recently launched initiative, Ne'ma, the nationwide collaboration in partnership with the UAE Ministry of Climate Change and Environment and the Abu Dhabi Crown Prince’s Court that translates the vision of H.H. Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, President of the UAE, to reduce food loss and waste, encourage social responsibility, and promote the principles of sustainability in line with UAE’s goal to half food waste by 2030 in alignment with the UAE’s National Food Security strategy and global UN Sustainable Development Goals.
In support of these objectives, the “Ne’ma Pledge” was announced at the Forum as a call to action to join the ne’ma movement by pledging to tackle food waste in multiple ways across the food value chain with the ambition of creating a collective action that results in impacting food waste reduction and contributing to the sustainability of our valuable resources.
Attended by Her Excellency Mariam bint Mohammed Saeed Hareb Almheiri, UAE Minister of Climate Change & Environment, the Forum featured major players and experts from across the food value chain, who looked at collaborative approaches to complement government efforts to cut food waste by half before the end of this decade.
Speaking about the importance of the Ne’ma initiative, His Excellency Sheikh Sultan bin Tahnoon Al Nahyan, Managing Director and Board Member of Emirates Foundation said, “Emirates Foundation’s long-standing partnerships with the business sector allows us to exchange expertise on how we can collaborate to find solutions to our most pressing challenges and set realistic targets to achieve our ambition.”
His Excellency added, “As part of our new strategy to build more resilient communities, the Ne’ma initiative has been formulated with the purpose of promoting and aligning shared responsibilities amongst key national stakeholders to reduce food loss and waste, including government, the private sector, NGOs and the general public.
Today, we are looking at ways to address the crucial matter of food loss and waste, working out how to achieve impact at scale, and targeting all sectors to encourage the practice of food waste reduction by adopting responsible purchasing and consumption habits.”
In her keynote speech, Her Excellency Mariam bint Mohammed Saeed Hareb Almheiri, UAE Minister of Climate Change & Environment, said, “As the national initiative for food loss and waste, Ne’ma will bring together the efforts of the public sector, private sector and wider community across the food value chain and will be a catalyst to achieving the UAE’s commitment to halving food waste by 2030.”
Her Excellency added, “In support of this, we are today launching the “Ne’ma Pledge” as a first step towards stimulating collaborative action among entities and individuals and creating a national movement that can multiply the impact on expected outcomes.”
After ten years of investing in Emirati youth and delivering a series of successful programs to help them reach their full potential, Emirates Foundation is readjusting its focus to concentrate on building community resilience and is taking the opportunity to expand its ambitions by focusing on creating communities that are more open and adaptive to change in order to deal with modern issues in a pro-active way.