AUS wins top honors at 17th Sharjah Award for Voluntary Work

American University of Sharjah (AUS) won first place in the seventeenth edition of the Sharjah Award for Voluntary Work in the Private Sector Category for its submission “Education for All.”

The entry for the award submitted by the Office of Community Services and Outreach at AUS consisted of several projects that included teaching English and computer basics since 2016 to people with disability at Al-Thiqa Club for the Handicapped; assisting the visually impaired from the Emirates Association of the Visually Impaired for the past three years in research, translation, and other academic work; teaching workers at the Labor Standards Development Authority (LSDA) in Sharjah since 2019; and the university’s “Flowers without Branches” project which teaches basic computer skills to orphans from the Sharjah Social Empowerment Foundation and Human Appeal International, conducted this year.   

"We are honored to receive this year's Sharjah Award for Voluntary Work. Thank you to the students and staff for making this award possible. Without their dedicated time and effort to help various organizations and causes, this would have not been possible. At American University of Sharjah, we truly value community service and highly encourage and support our students to volunteer and give back to their community,” said Dr. Lisa Moscaritolo, Vice Provost for Student Life at AUS.

The award is a testimony to the university’s commitment and continued efforts to enhance community engagement. AUS has a long history of being recognized for the work it has done in the field of community services. This is the third time that the university has won the Sharjah Award for Voluntary Work, having previously won it in 2010 and 2013. AUS also won first place in the Emirates Foundation Social Volunteering Competition in 2016 and was awarded the UAE Red Crescent “Aoon Award” in 2019.

One of the university’s biggest community services projects is the bi-annual Hand-in-Hand social initiative that started in 2009, which sees AUS student volunteers making a meaningful, tangible contribution to the community by renovating schools, learning centers, and orphans’ homes.