Dana Askari, left, and Janine Freiha hope to bring their Candy Cart charity to public hospitals across the UAE. "What we are doing puts a smile on children's faces," Askari says.
Dana Askari, left, and Janine Freiha hope to bring their Candy Cart charity to public hospitals across the UAE. "What we are doing puts a smile on children's faces," Askari says.

The candy cart that helps to keep child patients sweet in Dubai



The little boy can barely contain his excitement. He stands at the end of his bed, arms wrapped around a pile of toys and sweets that comes up to his dimpled chin.

"Say thank you," his mother prompts. He giggles, says, "Shukran" and follows it with a glorious smile.

Mohamed, seven, has been counting the days to this moment. It isn't his birthday and it isn't a feast day. It is Tuesday.

That is the day the Candy Cart comes to Dubai Hospital paediatric ward and the highlight of his week.

All of the children in the ward are desperately ill, some of them terminally so. By necessity, almost every moment of their lives is defined by the illness that brought them here and its treatment.

So the weekly arrival of the Candy Cart, laden with goodies there for the taking, is a welcome respite.

Dana Askari knows all too well just how much this matters. She brought the concept to Dubai Hospital last December. She did so with the encouragement of a childhood friend, Janine Freiha, and for the most personal of reasons.

Askari's daughter, Dania, died on June 21, 2010. She was one week shy of her 13th birthday.

In April 2008, Dania was diagnosed with rhabdomyosarcoma, a relatively rare cancer that develops in the body's connective tissue and accounts for about 3 per cent of childhood cancers.

The family have lived in the UAE for 19 years, but Dania and her mother travelled to New York for her treatment in the pioneering Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centre.

"I left my husband, Hasan, my son, Ali, then 15, and my youngest, Badr, who was just 18 months old, behind in Dubai," Askari says. "All I could think about was Dania."

More than a year of chemotherapy and radiation therapy followed. For a while the treatment appeared to be working. Askari says: "We came back to Dubai, returning to the US every three months for a check-up."

But in March 2010, a check-up uncovered chemotherapy-induced leukaemia. Dania had to have a bone-marrow transplant. The operation was a success, but the intensive chemotherapy that preceded it proved too much. Dania contracted veno-occlusive disease, a complication that results in liver failure.

Askari's voice falters: "Dania went in dancing and laughing - and she never came out."

For a moment Askari sits in silence as tears streak down her face. Then, with a shake of her head, she continues: "You would think that as a mother going through this, the last thing you'd want would be to go back to a world of cancer. But how can I not do this when I know that sometimes the only thing that brought my daughter happiness was Frank's Candy Cart?"

Askari is referring to Frank Tucciarone, who brought the Candy Cart to the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centre's paediatric cancer ward 20 years ago.

Even when Dania was too sick to eat the sweets he brought; even when she was in isolation and had to emerge from her sterile cocoon in gloves and a mask, avoiding all human contact while she made her selection; even then the Candy Cart brought something joyful, something that belonged not to illness but to childhood.

"It's so simple but so powerful," Askari says. "I knew that I wanted to do something after Dania died. I told Janine about it and she pushed me to do it."

A friend donated the hostess trolley that the women decorated with brightly coloured buttons and paint. In the beginning they brought only lollies and snacks - chemotherapy affects the sense of taste and patients undergoing treatment often prefer salty, sour foods.

Then they noticed how young the children were and added toys, DVDs and craft kits to the weekly shop that costs about Dh4,000 of their own money.

At first the cart was met with suspicion as staff and parents assumed that they were selling rather than giving away the goods.

"There is nothing like this in the UAE," Askari says. "So it took a bit of explaining."

They also needed to negotiate some bureaucracy: "We had to have an umbrella organisation to get permission to go into the hospital. We're so grateful to Friends of Cancer Patients for being that."

Eventually Askari and Freiha hope to see a Candy Cart in public hospitals across the Emirates. More ambitious still is Askari's dream of bringing Child Life Teams to the UAE. These are groups of social workers, volunteers and paediatric psychologists dedicated to supporting children undergoing treatment.

"The teams do everything from yoga to music to bringing in clowns and making the children laugh," Askari says.

"I know what it meant to me and I saw what it meant to Dania."

Again emotion threatens to overwhelm her as she says: "What we are doing puts a smile on children's faces. I'm sure there are many women out there who would love to help.

"For myself I know that Dania would not want me to sit idly by when I could be doing that," she says.

For more information about Dana Askari's Candy Cart initiative, contact the Friends of Cancer Patients by e-mail, info@focp.ae, or call 06 506 5542.

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COMPANY PROFILE

Company: Bidzi

● Started: 2024

● Founders: Akshay Dosaj and Asif Rashid

● Based: Dubai, UAE

● Industry: M&A

● Funding size: Bootstrapped

● No of employees: Nine

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Joker: Folie a Deux

Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Lady Gaga, Brendan Gleeson

Director: Todd Phillips 

Rating: 2/5

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Start-up hopes to end Japan's love affair with cash

Across most of Asia, people pay for taxi rides, restaurant meals and merchandise with smartphone-readable barcodes — except in Japan, where cash still rules. Now, as the country’s biggest web companies race to dominate the payments market, one Tokyo-based startup says it has a fighting chance to win with its QR app.

Origami had a head start when it introduced a QR-code payment service in late 2015 and has since signed up fast-food chain KFC, Tokyo’s largest cab company Nihon Kotsu and convenience store operator Lawson. The company raised $66 million in September to expand nationwide and plans to more than double its staff of about 100 employees, says founder Yoshiki Yasui.

Origami is betting that stores, which until now relied on direct mail and email newsletters, will pay for the ability to reach customers on their smartphones. For example, a hair salon using Origami’s payment app would be able to send a message to past customers with a coupon for their next haircut.

Quick Response codes, the dotted squares that can be read by smartphone cameras, were invented in the 1990s by a unit of Toyota Motor to track automotive parts. But when the Japanese pioneered digital payments almost two decades ago with contactless cards for train fares, they chose the so-called near-field communications technology. The high cost of rolling out NFC payments, convenient ATMs and a culture where lost wallets are often returned have all been cited as reasons why cash remains king in the archipelago. In China, however, QR codes dominate.

Cashless payments, which includes credit cards, accounted for just 20 per cent of total consumer spending in Japan during 2016, compared with 60 per cent in China and 89 per cent in South Korea, according to a report by the Bank of Japan.

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Developer: Treyarch, Raven Software
Publisher:  Activision
Console: PlayStation 4 & 5, Windows, Xbox One & Series X/S
Rating: 3.5/5

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Ruwais timeline

1971 Abu Dhabi National Oil Company established

1980 Ruwais Housing Complex built, located 10 kilometres away from industrial plants

1982 120,000 bpd capacity Ruwais refinery complex officially inaugurated by the founder of the UAE Sheikh Zayed

1984 Second phase of Ruwais Housing Complex built. Today the 7,000-unit complex houses some 24,000 people.  

1985 The refinery is expanded with the commissioning of a 27,000 b/d hydro cracker complex

2009 Plans announced to build $1.2 billion fertilizer plant in Ruwais, producing urea

2010 Adnoc awards $10bn contracts for expansion of Ruwais refinery, to double capacity from 415,000 bpd

2014 Ruwais 261-outlet shopping mall opens

2014 Production starts at newly expanded Ruwais refinery, providing jet fuel and diesel and allowing the UAE to be self-sufficient for petrol supplies

2014 Etihad Rail begins transportation of sulphur from Shah and Habshan to Ruwais for export

2017 Aldar Academies to operate Adnoc’s schools including in Ruwais from September. Eight schools operate in total within the housing complex.

2018 Adnoc announces plans to invest $3.1 billion on upgrading its Ruwais refinery 

2018 NMC Healthcare selected to manage operations of Ruwais Hospital

2018 Adnoc announces new downstream strategy at event in Abu Dhabi on May 13

Source: The National

How to vote in the UAE

1) Download your ballot https://www.fvap.gov/

2) Take it to the US Embassy

3) Deadline is October 15

4) The embassy will ensure all ballots reach the US in time for the November 3 poll

Match info

Athletic Bilbao 0

Real Madrid 1 (Ramos 73' pen)

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The more serious side of specialty coffee

While the taste of beans and freshness of roast is paramount to the specialty coffee scene, so is sustainability and workers’ rights.

The bulk of genuine specialty coffee companies aim to improve on these elements in every stage of production via direct relationships with farmers. For instance, Mokha 1450 on Al Wasl Road strives to work predominantly with women-owned and -operated coffee organisations, including female farmers in the Sabree mountains of Yemen.

Because, as the boutique’s owner, Garfield Kerr, points out: “women represent over 90 per cent of the coffee value chain, but are woefully underrepresented in less than 10 per cent of ownership and management throughout the global coffee industry.”

One of the UAE’s largest suppliers of green (meaning not-yet-roasted) beans, Raw Coffee, is a founding member of the Partnership of Gender Equity, which aims to empower female coffee farmers and harvesters.

Also, globally, many companies have found the perfect way to recycle old coffee grounds: they create the perfect fertile soil in which to grow mushrooms. 

Tree of Hell

Starring: Raed Zeno, Hadi Awada, Dr Mohammad Abdalla

Director: Raed Zeno

Rating: 4/5