From Abu Dhabi to New York Comic Con: How Noora Al Awadi is telling Emirati stories to the world

Farah Al Qaissieh and her brother Mansour both stuttered as children. They often discussed the teasing and awkward situations they faced due to their condition. Mansour, who had a more severe stutter, pursued his education and even proposed starting a group for people who stutter while at New York University. Farah, however, became increasingly withdrawn and avoided situations where she would have to speak.

In 2013, at age 23, Farah met someone else who stuttered for the first time and began meeting with colleagues to discuss their experiences. They eventually created a Meetup page, which attracted about 85 attendees to its first awareness event in 2015. After the loss of her brother in 2015, Farah has been working to establish a support network called the Stutter Community in Abu Dhabi, with the goal of eventually creating a dedicated centre to help as many people as possible.

The organisation now has about 33 regular members from various nationalities and plans to resume in-person meetups and host events for children and teenagers in 2027. Farah's work extends beyond community events, as she aims to create a hub in Abu Dhabi that would bring together speech therapists, psychologists, schools, universities, and employers to make environments more inclusive for people who stutter.

She is collaborating with researchers at Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence on projects involving stuttering and speech technology, such as AI tools for stuttering diagnosis and speech therapy improvement, and an interactive game for early identification of language disorders in children.