Support can mean very different things. Sometimes it is having somewhere safe to go. Sometimes it is finding a mentor who has already made all the career mistakes you are currently trying to avoid. And sometimes it is just meeting people in a city where, despite millions of residents, it can still be surprisingly easy to feel alone (If you have lived in a big city, you know the feeling).

Across the UAE, there are organisations doing all of the above — helping women navigate difficult circumstances, build businesses, move forward in their careers, find new communities and feel a little less on their own. Here are a few of them worth knowing — and actually, there are more.

Let’s start with the organisation dealing with perhaps the most immediate form of support on this list.

The Dubai Foundation for Women and Children, or DFWAC, was established in July 2007 under a law issued by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai. It was created to provide protection, care and support for women and children going through difficult or unsafe circumstances.

Today, DFWAC offers shelter alongside social, psychological, legal and medical support, as well as rehabilitation services designed to help women and children regain stability and move forward.

And support here does not end once an immediate problem has been resolved. A big part of the foundation’s work is focused on longer-term wellbeing, recovery and helping people rebuild a sense of safety and independence.

There is also a free 24/7 helpline, 800111, available across the UAE.

Women Who Thrive starts from an entirely different problem: Dubai can sometimes feel surprisingly lonely.

Founders Achasah Weinreb and Sue Sirjani built the community around exactly that feeling — particularly familiar to people who move to the city and suddenly find themselves having to build a social circle from scratch.

Rather than creating another purely professional networking group, Women Who Thrive looks at women’s lives much more broadly. Its community is organised around different areas of wellbeing, including mental, social, professional, financial, emotional and physical health.

That translates into a very mixed calendar: workshops, fitness sessions, money conversations, career events, creative activities and, importantly, simple opportunities to meet other people.

If your problem is less “how do I meet people?” and more “how do I actually turn this idea into a business?”, there is Female Fusion.

Its founder, Jen Blandos, had already spent years building businesses when Female Fusion began in Dubai as a Facebook group. Women used it to ask one another the practical questions that come with starting a company — what licence do you need, who should you speak to, how does this actually work?

Then came 2020. As small-business owners suddenly faced an entirely new set of challenges, Blandos developed the group into a more structured business network.

Today, Female Fusion supports female entrepreneurs at very different stages — from someone who has an idea scribbled in their Notes app to founders trying to scale an established company.

There are business courses, coaching, practical resources, events and a wider member network, with in-person activity in both Dubai and Abu Dhabi. The community itself includes women from more than 100 nationalities.

Sometimes the help you need is surprisingly simple: diapers, baby formula, a stroller, a pair of school shoes. Simple — but not necessarily easy to afford when life suddenly gets complicated.

Hope-Amel UAE started in Dubai in 2020 with exactly this kind of problem. Its founder, Abbie Kadom, an Iraqi-Canadian who has lived in Dubai for more than two decades, received a message about a family struggling to afford basic items for their baby. She shared it with others and, within minutes, everything the family needed had been covered. It made her wonder how many other families might be quietly going through the same thing.

There is a more personal story behind the name, too. Kadom lost her younger brother, Amel, to an undiagnosed heart condition in 2017. The loss pushed her to think about how she could turn grief into something useful for other people. When the pandemic arrived a few years later, and families across the UAE began facing sudden financial uncertainty, that idea became Hope-Amel — first as a Facebook group and then as a much larger community of mothers helping other mothers.

The concept remains wonderfully practical. Hope-Amel collects diapers, formula, sanitary products, baby equipment, clothing and other everyday essentials and passes them on to mothers and families who need them. There are no cash handouts: instead, donors — or “Hope Givers”, as the community calls them — provide the things families have actually asked for.

What started with one Facebook post has grown considerably. By 2025, Hope-Amel said it had supported more than 20,000 families across the UAE, and it continues to work with volunteers, schools and businesses on donation drives and community projects. In 2026, for example, Emirates and dnata donated hundreds of repurposed children’s strollers to local organisations, with Hope-Amel among the recipients.

Aurora50 was founded in 2020 by HH Sheikha Shamma bint Sultan bin Khalifa Al Nahyan and Diana Wilde, initially with a particular focus on increasing women’s representation on corporate boards.

Its first initiative, Pathway, was designed to prepare senior women for board positions. Since then, Aurora50 has expanded its work into workplace inclusion, leadership and professional development across the UAE and the wider region.

One of its most interesting initiatives is NOORA, launched in 2023.

NOORA is a professional network for corporate women, bringing together people from different companies, sectors and levels of seniority. Founding partners included Accenture, Emirates Global Aluminium, Emirates Group, ENOC and TAQA.

The idea addresses a problem that does not necessarily disappear as you become more senior: your professional circle can actually become smaller.

NOORA creates space for women to meet peers outside their own organisations, exchange experiences, build relationships and have conversations that might be harder to have within their immediate workplace.

Brest Friends was founded in Dubai in 2005 by Dr Houriya Kazim, the UAE’s first female surgeon. The idea grew out of what she had seen early in her medical career. After returning to the UAE from medical school in Ireland, Kazim encountered women arriving at the hospital with very advanced breast cancer. At the time, there were no female surgeons in the country, and fear, lack of information, and cultural sensitivities could make seeking medical help particularly difficult for some women. Kazim went on to train in surgical oncology before returning to the UAE and making breast health education a major part of her work.

Brest Friends grew from that mission and became Dubai’s first breast cancer support group. Today, it brings patients and survivors together, giving women a space to meet people who understand the experience first-hand, exchange stories and simply not go through it alone. The organisation also works on breast cancer awareness, education and research, alongside emotional and financial support.

And the help can be very practical. Brest Friends says it works to remove some of the everyday barriers that can make an already difficult period harder — from limited health insurance and transportation to childcare, language and cultural differences. Its support group brings patients and survivors together for regular meetings, while the wider community also organises awareness events and activities.