PHILANTHROPY
It is said that Dubai is the land of opportunity. If you are willing to put in the passion and dedication, Dubai can make what feels like impossible possible. This rings true for Dubai- based The Sparkle Foundation Founder and Sparkle Malawi CEO Sarah Brook. A TEDx speaker, winner of the UAE Humanitarian award, and one of the top seven CEOs for the UK Charity Sector, it is in Dubai that Sarah was able to realise her dream and drive change.
Sarah Brook with H.E Sheikh Nahayan Mabarak Al Nahyan, Cabinet Member and Minister of Tolerance and Coexistence
"I am passionate about driving change at the grassroots level and making a sustainable and significant impact on the world." At its heart, The Sparkle Foundation aims to create and deliver a future in which every community has equal opportunity to live a life of health and self-sufficiency in Malawi. And while some may ask, why Malawi? For the then 18-year-old from a quaint village in England, it was a case of pointing at a map; "I think I landed on Malawi, and that's how I ended up in Malawi". It was not the average destination, but volunteering was something that Sarah was destined for, and it was this trip that sparked her purpose. After falling sick on her trip and being admitted to hospital with a twist in her bowel, Sarah had a two week recovery stay after much-needed surgery. After she was discharged, a friend commented that 300 people were waiting in the queue to see the one doctor, and she was ultimately only seen because she was white. She also learnt that whilst she was getting the medical attention
she needed, others had passed away whilst in the queue, including children.
"When something like that happens, your life perspective changes forever. At that moment, I realised I had to do something. It was my mission to make a difference in at least one child's life." After finishing University in the UK, Sarah returned to Malawi and built a small nursery school. Once complete, she walked away thinking she had done her part for charity and returned to the UK to start her life as a journalist and work placement at the BBC. It wasn't until she returned to Malawi a year later to check on how the nursery was doing that she discovered everything had gone: no roof, no toys, no children. "I was a 21-year-old who did not know the charity sector. I had built something that they never asked. I looked at the life expectancy of a charity in Malawi… it was two years. I did not want to be another statistic. I felt I needed to do something about this."
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