RIYADH: Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, chairman of Alwaleed bin Talal Foundation (ABTF), donated $1 million to the Right to Live Society (RLS), Gaza, to help children with disabilities get needed care, education and training. The Right to Live Society is a nongovernmental charitable organization established in 1992 as the first and only society to care for people with Down’s Syndrome in the Gaza Strip.
In 1998, Prince Alwaleed funded the construction of the new permanent RLS headquarter with SR1,500,000. By 2000, RLS was serving 400 individuals and employing 100 people.
Prince Alwaleed, through ABTF, has donated to many philanthropic projects globally, including a recent announcement of his readiness to donate over 100 housing units to be built at a total of SR5 million to victims of rundown slum areas in Cairo, a $235,282 donation to an Oxfam project — Increase Market Access for Women in Senegal, a donation of over $3 million to the Darfur region of Sudan and $356,500 to the Deworm the World Initiative.
The initiative was presented by Young Global Leaders Education Taskforce at the Davos World Economic Forum. Last year, the prince made a $360,000 donation to SOS Children’s Village in Indonesia and a substantial emergency donation to Indonesia’s flood victims. In 2006, Prince Alwaleed made a donation for the Yemen landslide victims and in the same year donated $1 million through the United Nations World Food Program to the drought-ravaged people of Kenya. Prince Alwaleed had made a SR20 million donation to Pakistan’s earthquake victims in 2005.
Other major donations made by Prince Alwaleed included $19 million to Southeast Asia’s Tsunami victims, $830,000 donation to the families of the Egyptian train fire victims, 80 tons of supplies to the Algerian quake victims, $500,000 to Jammeh Foundation for Peace in The Gambia to fund a diagnostic center, one million Egyptian Pounds in support of the Susane Mubarak campaign for the treatment of children suffering from cancer, $5 million to assist in the rescue and rebuilding efforts in the wake of floods in Morocco, $5 million to support the Carter Center Peace and Health programs in Africa, and the rebuilding of Zayzoon village in Syria after it was swept away by floods caused by the collapse of a dam.
