ONE WHO DOES GOOD WORKS

"I was never motivated by success and power for their own sake or ambition. The important thing was to help people in need."  I remembered these words of Mehriban Aliyeva's when the media spread the news that Azerbaijan's First Lady, President of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation, had been awarded the order "For services to Astrakhan Region" in Russia. This award was conferred upon her by a governor's order "for her great contribution to the development of fruitful cooperation and strengthening of friendly relations between Astrakhan Region and the Azerbaijani Republic".

Shortly afterwards, on 21 August, the President of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation and UNESCO and ISESCO goodwill ambassador, Mehriban Aliyeva, was presented with another award - the Honorary Diploma of the State of Kuwait for her extensive promotion of the cultural heritage of Islam in the world, her charity activities in Azerbaijan and outside the country and her great contribution to education and medicine.

Also in August, news agencies joyfully reported that the felling of rare species of trees had been prevented following the personal intervention of the President of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation Mehriban Aliyeva.

All this news in the last few days has somehow stirred our imagination about the scope and scale of Mehriban Aliyeva's work - from protecting a few trees in a part of Baku to preserving world heritage monuments. There is no distinction here between great and small causes, significant and insignificant; here, everything is important, paramount and urgent. "Some people try to regain lost health, others to get an education, others to create a museum and others to preserve monuments for future generations. Sometimes the need arises to protect changes to the infrastructure, and at times interesting projects need support in organizing. The most important thing is that we carry out major projects and also help people," Mehriban Aliyeva once explained in an interview.       

A social mandate

Back in 2004 when the Heydar Aliyev Foundation was being set up, the main idea was to support the more needy sections of society - children who had been deprived of parental care, those suffering from various illnesses, refugees and forced migrants and the older generation. Today the results of the projects carried out by the Heydar Aliyev Foundation are obvious: the opening of hundreds of new schools for over 100,000 pupils, new medical centres with state-of-the-art equipment, the creation of favourable conditions for integrating people with physical disabilities into society, the construction of homes for young people leaving children's homes and also apartment blocks for the families of refugees and forced migrants. Thanks to Mehriban Aliyeva's support the existing children's homes and boarding schools in Azerbaijan have been completely refurbished. 

As President Ilham Aliyev noted, at times projects begun by the Heydar Aliyev Foundation have later received state support and have been implemented on a wider scale throughout the country. For example, as part of the "A new school for a new Azerbaijan" project, 412 new schools were built with the foundation's support. As a consequence, the state supported this programme and over 3,000 schools were either overhauled or refurbished.

And a few years ago, at Mehriban Aliyeva's initiative, the programme  "A life without thalassaemia" was begun, in line with which the biggest thalassaemia centre in the region was built in Baku. Today, the state is preparing a special programme to combat this illness.

In the name of a dialogue

Other important areas of Mehriban Aliyeva's work are support for young talented people, the restoration of historical monuments, the promotion of ancient culture and art and, finally, putting across to the world the truth about Azerbaijan as a secular country where centuries-long traditions of tolerance have been preserved.

With each project the Heydar Aliyev Foundation tries to make a contribution to the establishment between different peoples of human values such as humanism, solidarity and tolerance. As part of the "Azerbaijan - a land of tolerance" project, dozens of historic architectural and religious monuments have been restored, as well as mosques, churches and synagogues, in the country. An educational complex for Jewish children has opened in Baku.

The Heydar Aliyev Foundation has also helped to restore stained-glass windows in Strasburg Cathedral, monuments in the Palace of Versailles, churches in various regions of France, Berlin Castle, the Roman Catacombs and valuable folios kept in the Vatican Library.

All these initiatives of Mehriban Aliyeva's, together with international forums that are held from time to time in Azerbaijan, have laid the foundations for a global process called the dialogue of civilization, and Baku has become the capital city of this movement.

The Heydar Aliyev Foundation plays an active part in preserving Azerbaijan's cultural heritage. The Qobustan State Historical and Artistic National Park, the Icari Sahar [Old City], Maiden Tower and the Sirvansah [Shirvanshah] Palace complex have all been included in UNESCO's World Cultural Heritage List, and the Azerbaijani mugham, Ashiq art, the art of rug-making, tar playing and its manufacture and the Novruz festival are all on the representative list of UNESCO's intangible cultural heritage list.

At Mehriban Aliyeva's initiative, an International Mugam Centre was built in the Azerbaijani capital and a mugham competition is held every year. The Qabala International Music Festival, Rostropovich and Shostakovich Festivals and international festivals to mark the anniversaries of the world renowned musicians Uzeyir Hacibayli and Bulbul have also become a fine tradition for the world's musicians.

Mehriban xanim's [mode of address] wide-ranging activities have been widely acclaimed worldwide. Such prestigious awards as the highest order of the international charity fund "Philanthropists of the Century"- "Ruby Cross" and "Golden Heart", the prize for large-scale charity activities, bear witness to the high regard in which she is held.  She has also been awarded officer rank of the Order of the Legion d'Honneur of France, the Grand Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland, the prize of the World Health Organization and a whole number of other high international awards.

As goodwill ambassador of UNESCO and ISESCO, Mehriban Aliyeva speaks in a language everyone understands - the language of culture, the arts and humanity. And this, apart from everything else, enables her to convey to the world's public the truth about Azerbaijan's most painful problem - the Karabakh conflict. The positive results of the "Justice for Xocali!" [Khojaly, an Armenia-occupied Azeri town in Karabakh] campaign are plain for all to see today.

Good causes

Mehriban xanim herself regards the restoration of charitable activities in Azerbaijan as the greatest result of the work of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation. "Charitable work has a long history in our country. During the period of the oil boom, the oil magnates Haci Zeynalabdin Tagiyev and Musa Nagiyev did much to create these traditions. At the beginning of the XX century Haci Zeynalabdin Tagiyev funded the construction of the first secular school for girls and the opening of the first national theatre. He also helped teach Azerbaijani young people in Russia and Europe. The beautiful buildings built by Musa Nagiyev are among the architectural jewels of Baku. It is splendid that these traditions are still alive in tolerant and secular Azerbaijan, which has an ancient history and is situated at the crossroads of East and West. The past and the present live together in harmony here," Mehriban Aliyev once said in an interview on this subject.

She said it would ultimately be wrong to regard charity work as some kind of appendage to the social policy of the state and to see it merely as an auxiliary tool enabling civilian institutions and the private sector to share the burden of the state. Such a utilitarian-pragmatic attitude to philanthropy renders innocuous its inner, moral content and would turn it into a kind of farce like the "communist subbotniks". "Moreover, according to this logic, as the economy grows and the state spends more on social programmes, the scope for charitable activities should be reduced.  In actual fact, the world is seeing a directly opposite trend - widespread participation in charitable activities and the scope of charitable resources are, as a rule, higher in those countries where the state has comparatively big opportunities for funding the social sphere," the First Lady explains.

It is this approach that enables the Heydar Aliyev Foundation to always be with those who need help. There are even cases where people who are unable to find support from the state turn to the Heydar Aliyev Foundation or to Mehriban xanim personally to solve their problems, already assured that they will be understood and supported.

And if we look at all this through the prism of the work of the country's First Lady, what we see is an individual who shares with dignity the high level of responsibility which lies on the shoulders of her husband, the head of state. "This is certainly a challenge," Mehriban Aliyeva herself admits, although she regards serving people as a great honour and an opportunity that has come her way in life.