THE THREE AIMS OF THE SCHEHERAZADE FOUNDATION:
FEMALE EMPOWERMENT
During the Covid lockdown, we started considering the world that the young women in our lives – our, daughters, granddaughters, nieces, and those of our friends – will be stepping into.
We started googling ‘the empowerment of women’ and realised that almost all the initiatives in this area are being run by women, rather than by men. We couldn’t understand why men – who adore their daughters, and have such overwhelming faith in them – wouldn’t drop everything and strive to create opportunities for them, so that women everywhere have the chance to make a real difference in the world.
At The Scheherazade Foundation, we are passionate believers in the extraordinary abilities of women – their vision, their energy, and their commitment to the future. Our objective is not to work to empower them because, given a level playing field, women will empower themselves. Instead, we are endeavouring to attain gender equality, so that women can take the opportunities they deserve.
BRIDGING CULTURES
At The Scheherazade Foundation, we believe in a single and universal truth of our time: that the future of this fragile little planet relies very greatly on respect and harmony between peoples and their cultures.
Of course, we are all proud of where we come from.
But the way we see it, there’s nothing so magical as learning about another culture, and being invited to experience it from the inside out.
The Scheherazade Foundation has been working to bridge cultures in unusual ways, and to show young people everywhere that there’s a huge world out there – a world of awe-inspiring wonder, of traditions, and often of jarring and conflicting histories.
By sharing world cultures, we believe it’s possible to heal wounds of the past, and to prepare the next generation for the future.
HARNESSING FOLKLORE
We are obsessed about folklore here at The Scheherazade Foundation, and in particular the effect that traditional teaching stories have on solving problems and keeping our lives in balance.
Until the mass production of the written word – so very recent in human civilisation – people had no choice but to package up information, ideas, and histories in a way that they could be remembered.
As a result, this mass of information was arranged in such a way that it could be made available to every woman, man, and child. It’s a system so brilliant that most of us hardly realise it’s there – all around us all the time – doing its magic in plain sight.
The Scheherazade Foundation is working to harness the ancient knowledge locked up in folklore and stories. As we stumble our way into the digital world, this invaluable repository of human know-how is in danger of being lost.
We believe that, used in the right way, stories can help solve social anxieties, keep society in balance, and teach us all in the most remarkable ways.