Dubai Cares announces 'Signature' auction donors

Organizers for 'Dubai Cares', the charity drive held during the Holy Month of Ramadan to help educate one million children in poor countries, have announced that H.H. Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashed Al Maktoum, UAE vice president, prime minister and ruler of Dubai will make a surprise contribution from his personal belongings, to join the major donors to 'Signature', an auction under the patronage of HH Sheikha Manal Bint Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, President of Dubai Women Establishment.

The auction is supported by Christie's, the largest and oldest fine art auction house in the world.

The auction includes collectibles personally donated by prominent business and government figures throughout the UAE and from Sheikha Manal Bint Mohammed, who donated a painting 'Anticipation', one of her own works of art.

Other items officially donated to the auction are a 302 year old, gold laminated copy of the Holy Quran, an antique Gold and Silver Coins collection from the Ummayad and Abbasid period and an untitled painting by Hakim Ghazali, personally donated by HE Abdul Rahman Mohammed Nasir Al Owais, Minister for Culture, Youth and Community Development.

The auction is part of Sheikha Manal's role with 'Dubai Cares' in which she champions the cause of girls and their plight to obtain access to education in poor countries. HH recently lead a delegation of Dubai women and women organizations to Yemen, to see first-hand the situation on the ground in terms of children's primary education.

'Dubai Cares' joins a list of international initiatives launched in Dubai that express Dubai's will to play an effective role contributing to achieving the world's mission to secure a better tomorrow for future generations. The campaign is Dubai's contribution to a global drive to assist countries in achieving their U.N. Millennium Development Goals for providing Children's Primary Education to every child by 2015.