Tharwa Foundation

The Tharwa Foundation (Arabic مؤسسة ثروة) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan grassroots organization that encourages diversity, development and democracy in Syria and the broader Middle East/North Africa. The Foundation derives its name from the Arabic word, tharwa. Founded in 2003, the Tharwa Foundation is an offshoot of the Tharwa Project, an initiative launched in Damascus Syria by Ammar Abdulhamid and Khawla Yusuf. Abdulhamid is a blogger, human rights activist and author. Yusuf is an author, politician, and human rights activist.

The Tharwa Foundation released its manifesto in early 2007. As of May 2008, it has been signed by 100 nonviolent human rights activists in the region.

The Tharwa Foundation was established to provide a supportive environment for democratic principles and practices in the broader Middle East and North Africa region. Through programs that encourage inter-communal dialogue and leadership development, Tharwa uses a range of educational, networking and outreach strategies to enable people of different religious, economic and ethnic backgrounds to come together to discuss peaceful solutions to the region's longstanding socio-political and development challenges.

Since its inception, Tharwa has been guided by a vision for the region’s future, based upon:

The Tharwa Foundation was established to continue the work of the Tharwa Project, an independent initiative launched in Syria in 2001 by activist and dissident Ammar Abdulhamid to spotlight the living conditions of religious and ethnic minorities and foster constructive dialogue between majority and minority communities in the broader Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, in the hope of enabling the creation of new bridges of inter-communal trust and understanding, facilitating the ongoing processes of democratization and modernization and helping to stem the rising tide of extremist ideologies.

With a small paid staff, and a larger network of regular contributing reporters, Tharwa developed communication tools to enable inter-communal dialogue in the MENA region. Utilizing an interactive website, online publications, and a number of regional and international advisors and partnering institutions, such as BitterLemons, the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR), Pax Christi Nederland, Hivos, Heinrich Boell Stiftung, and openDemocracy.net, Tharwa fostered new avenues for communications and grassroots activism in the region.