Somaya Al-Mutawa

Somaya Mahmoud Jasim Al-Mutawa is a Qatari educator and leader, the first Head of the Rationalisation Department at Qatar General Electricity and Water Corporation, Kahramaa, and former Director of Kahramaa Awareness Park.

She grew up in a large family in Mesaieed, where her father, Mahmoud Jassim Al-Mutawa—may God have mercy on him—managed public relations for QAFCO. The small industrial community was some distance from the wider Al-Mutawa family in Doha. She and her siblings initially attended schools in Al Wakra, then completed primary education in Mesaieed after schools opened there. Arab, international and Norwegian neighbours working in industry helped give the family a close community around them.

At nineteen, she married her cousin Jamal Noah Al-Mutawa, who was ten years older. Establishing a home while completing university made the early years demanding, but she graduated with distinction from Qatar University’s College of Education, ranking second in her cohort with education as her major and art as her minor. She was then assigned to the Audio Education School for Girls, an unfamiliar special-education setting in which she initially had no experience.

With support from the school administration and experienced colleagues, she learned sign language and entered the world of pupils with hearing and speech disabilities. The attachment became one of the strongest experiences of her life. She attended conferences on disability and deaf education, contributed to reference books documenting Unified Arabic Sign Language in different fields, joined the Qatar Society for the Disabled and the Social Cultural Centre for People with Special Needs, and was selected to serve on the board of the Qatar Centre for Voluntary Work.

In 2003, a Ministry of Education scholarship took her to the University of Brighton in Britain to study English before beginning a master’s degree in special education for gifted pupils. When she found that the required specialisation was not available in Britain, she explored programmes in Australia and the United States, but the necessary conditions could not be secured and she returned to Doha. She later spent nearly two years as an assessment adviser with the newly established Evaluation Institute at the Supreme Education Council. A further plan to study the same specialisation at Gulf University in Bahrain also ended when scholarships to Arab countries were suspended.

A collaboration between her school and Qatar General Electricity and Water Corporation, Kahramaa, opened a different route. The school was preparing a booklet for deaf pupils, financed by Kahramaa, and she coordinated the work between the two organisations. Her visits to the Public Relations Department allowed its head, Abdul Rahman Al-Khulaifi, to see her commitment and offer her a vacant public-relations post. After ten years in education, she accepted responsibility for communication with schools and for activities that taught pupils the importance of conserving water and electricity.

She began delivering lectures and organising school activities through individual effort supported by department director Nasser Ali Al-Mohannadi and department head Abdul Rahman Mahmoud Al-Khulaifi. That work formed the nucleus of the Rationalisation Department. When the department was established in 2012 under Fahd Rashid Al Kaabi, she became its first head; Fatima Saeed Al-Musnad later succeeded her. She helped develop and implement structured conservation plans for schools and other sectors through the characters Qatoura and Kahrub.

After Kahramaa Awareness Park was completed, the corporation’s president appointed her to direct it, placing many of the department’s projects and plans under her supervision. Conservation was not simply a professional brief: she regarded the protection of Qatar’s resources as a personal responsibility and sought to instil that principle through every available activity.

Her twenties brought the death of her father, whom she regarded as her example and guide. The loss left her feeling broken, but it also strengthened her commitment to the ethics, learning and cultural breadth she had inherited from him.

A second crisis began on 5 November 2015, eight months after she took charge of the park and six months after receiving the highest vote in the Tamim Toastmasters Arabic Speech Club election, where she went on to serve as president. She suffered a stroke with right-sided paralysis at work and was taken to Hamad General Hospital. The condition threatened her ability to walk, write or draw, yet sustained treatment and faith eventually enabled her to move her right hand and return to writing and drawing.

Recovery changed the way she viewed her life and reopened an earlier interest in training. She joined the First Step programme, delivered by the Family Development House under the patronage of Sheikha Moza and led at the time by Amal Al-Mannai. The programme supported young Qataris who had encountered setbacks and introduced her to professional training methods.

She was one of twenty-eight nominated trainers taught by Dr Abdul Aziz Al-Hurr and Dr Ashraf Jalal, and one of the five selected as certified trainers to deliver the programme. Later she entered training rooms in a wheelchair and stood before participants while leaning on a crutch, making the act of teaching part of her own return to public life.

Treatment took her between hospitals in Doha, Chicago, India and Thailand and included extensive physical therapy and medication under specialist supervision. The long period away from work eased some of the pain and gave her time to reconsider both her personal and professional direction.

She earned diplomas in behaviour modification, psychological disorders, and marital and family counselling from Notting Hill College in Britain. During the Covid-19 pandemic, she trained members of a Ministry of Public Health volunteer campaign online and helped motivate thousands of volunteers serving Qatar. She also continued remote training with government institutions and ministries and wrote public-awareness columns for Al-Sharq under the title ‘To Create Awareness’ and for the Al-Jasra news platform.

Her recovery required several stages of treatment and repeated travel. She eventually left the wheelchair and underwent successful corrective surgery on her right leg at Qatar’s Bone and Joint Centre. The operation was performed by consultant doctors Dr Majid Mukhaimer and Dr Ghaleb Al-Kubaisi with a highly qualified medical team.