Fair Saturday Awards were launded in 2017 in Bilbao, if not, where?. Its goal was clear:

“Recognizing, at an international level, the initiatives of inspiring individuals and organizations that have proven to generate social impact through art and culture.”

It was a few years earlier when I had the opportunity to meet one of the people behind this initiative, Saioa Eibar, and a little later, its founder, Jordi Albareda. These two people have already a place in this blog. In fact, this is not the first time I have mentioned them. Their social entrepreneurship deserves a Fair Saturday Award, and many more.

This time, I would like to introduce you to another entrepreneur (P.E.), whom I had the honour of meeting during the awards ceremony just a week ago at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.

This year 2025, the awarded people were the following ones:

Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize in Economics 2001 (Indiana)
Martin Wolf, Chief Economics Commentator – Financial Times (Londons)
Rania Moualla, ZADK Saudi Culinary Arts Academy (Arabia Saudí)
Adjoa Andoh, actress (Bristol)
Ahmad Joudeh, dancer and choreographer (Damasco)
Joaquín Achúcarro, pianist (Bilbao)
Gerediaga Elkartea, cultural agent (Erandio)

Although more than one of these individuals deserves a post, today I want to focus on the dancer and choreographer Ahmad Joude, from Damascus.

Fair Saturday Award decided to honour this individual in recognition of his artistic and humanitarian achievements. Ahmad was born in 1990 in the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp in Syria. At the age of 16, he began his career as a dancer and in 2016, thanks to the Dutch National Ballet, his artistic career began to gain international recognition. His life has not been easy, but:

“ Despite war and threats, he never gave up on dance, which became an act of resistance and hope. Committed to social causes, he takes part in projects on inclusion and children’s rights. In 2021, he published his autobiography Dance or Die and in 2024 he was recognized as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. His life affirms dance as a tool of freedom and hope.”

These days I have been reading about him and watching and listening to videos and interviews. Learning about what he has been through, knowing that he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, that he has a past he cannot shake off, but that, despite everything, he has been able to rebuild his life and do what he does for himself and for many people who have been in his situation, is worthy of recognition, gratitude and applause.

The other day, I read the following passage:

“Witnessing a child killed in a battle, Ahmad Joudeh decided to work for children orphaned in the war. He joined fundraising activities for SOS Children’s Village Syria and held dance lessons for the children of their villages, Ahmad has a lot of joy and a big talent in teaching children especially children with difficult situations such as refugees and down syndrome children, through his dance workshops he makes the children build a stronger self esteem and create a deeper bond between them.”

Meeting Ahmad in person, having him in front of me, talking to him and, even with everything he has been through and carries inside (his past and its consequences), seeing how grateful he is, leads me to consider him a role model. Because each of us can do more than we think, because life is meant to be lived, because it is possible to be an entrepreneur in different fields, because if Ahmad can do it, perhaps we should think about what is stopping many of us from doing so. For that and much more, Ahmad deserves a place on this blog.

Thank you, Ahmad, for what you do.

Today I’m going in a different direction than normal. I want to express my total rejection of the barbarism that a “man” has decided to carry out for the sole fact of… What? Honestly, I find no reason but unfounded excuses to end the lives of people, men and women, children, and thousands of young people who have barely begun to live and who have to be unjustly separated from their parents. That’s it if they don’t die before reaching a “safe” place but without their “belongings”, their life, their history, their friends, their home, their city, their town, and their —already broken— dreams.

I’m writing this post with teary eyes and a broken heart due to a situation none of us would like to experience.

Three years ago, in March of 2019, thanks to the MoPED: Modernization of Pedagogical Higher Education by Innovative Teaching Instruments project, and invited by my colleague and teacher of the University of Deusto, Olga Dziabenko, I had the pleasure of travelling to Ukraine to contribute on the training of more than 50 teachers of Higher Education, in my case, related to teacherpreneurs. I discovered the kindness of its people, as well as their traditions and history (and I took a piece of it with me). But honestly, something that caught my eye was that, even though they are not “privileged” in a material level, as I might be, they were people like me, passionate and willing to work and improve, dreaming of going forward and progressing on the education sector, and so thankful and expressing their recognition towards me that they made me feel very valuable.

Today I want to give them back that love, appreciation and acknowledgement to all of them, and, specially, be at their disposal to anything I might be able to offer.

This post goes for them and for Olga Dziabenko, for giving me the opportunity of living firsthand with their Ukrainian colleagues. Thank you, Olga.

SAY NO TO WAR.

Translated by María Ubierna Quintanilla and supervised by Arantza Arruti.