On Nov. 20, various red balloons could be spotted across campus that represented the With Hope event, which took place that evening in NYU Abu Dhabi’s Marketplace. The event gave students the chance to network with a member of the With Hope Organization and other professionals from the field and to have a conversation about mental health and mental health advocacy in the UAE.

With Hope is a Non-Governmental Organization led by Emiratis that promotes mental health awareness through volunteering and advocacy. The event brought together Reem Hantoush, a member of With Hope, Vedrana Mladina, NYUAD’s Licensed Clinical and Health Psychologist, Tina Wadhwa, Associate Director of the Health Promotion Office and other professionals from the field to discuss the importance of mental health and emotional wellbeing and the obstacles UAE youth face. Participants in the event were asked to wear red to symbolize their support for the mental health needs of others.

“I think the event went really well. We had a lot of people coming in from outside the university, which was great to see,” said Sarah Alkaabi, Class of 2020, one of the event organizers. “Overall, I think the event was a huge success, a lot of people attended and were eager to listen and there was a lot of input from the audience...and that’s exactly what we wanted. We wanted people to open up, we wanted people to start a conversation on mental health … we achieved our goal and I think a lot of people benefitted from it as well.”

The Network of Students in Medicine and Health — NeSMAH — held its inaugural event at NYUAD on Nov. 24. The event brought together six faculty advisors and student delegations from eight universities, totalling 28 participants from across the UAE in order to build the foundations of the network. The universities that took part in the inaugural event included Abu Dhabi University Abu Dhabi campus and Al Ain campus, American University of Sharjah, University of Sharjah, Fatima College of Health and Sciences, Khalifa University and Al Ain University of Science and Technology.

The program of the event included drafting a mission statement for the network, designing the organization’s structure, developing a timeline of events and identifying external partners that will assist NeSMAH in reaching its goals. After the event, student delegations will return to their respective universities with the foundations and tools to be able to eventually create their own local NeSMAH clubs which will become part of the larger network. Each university has chosen an official point of contact who can refer to each other and spread the mission of the network in their own settings, as well as faculty advisors who will help in this process.