My name is Dr Hibah Shata, I am a dentist from Saudi Arabia, living in Dubai since 2000. In 2007, my daughter was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder at the age of 15 months. At the time, there were no services to support special needs children at a very young age, so I founded Child Early Intervention Medical Center in 2008 to provide early intervention services to children affected with Autism and developmental delays. In 2010 children were ready for schools but the schools were not ready for them, so I founded Child Learning and Enrichment Medical Center, an alternative education center that provides school readiness skills and K12 programs online for students. We also ran "I want to go to school" campaign to promote inclusion through teacher training, workshops and inclusion conferences.

I realized there was a need to support the children inside schools, and through the medical center we have managed to mainstream hundreds of students and provide them with school support services. In 2016, the Dubai Inclusion Strategy was launched and Maharat Learning Center was born. The idea was to incorporate the new 21st century technologies in teaching and learning in programs, communication and quality monitoring. Maharat is a technology driven education center that emerged in a time where the GCC region is in dire need for such programs. Today we provide children with early interveniton and school readiness programs, support students of determination in schools and universitites, and provide young adults with vocational training and technology skills to enable them to find jobs and support them at the work place.