We believe many challenges facing humankind can be overcome by harnessing and reactivating ancient wisdom that surrounds us – often passed from one generation to the next through the stories we tell and retell.
Folktales, fables, and teaching-stories – hundreds and even thousands of years old – celebrate our similarities rather than focussing on what sets us apart.
By bridging cultures through shared commonalities, and by combining both new and old thinking, great strides can be made for the good of society, for generations to come.
At The Scheherazade Foundation, we work with leading governmental and non-governmental organisations throughout the world to achieve our aims. Much of our activity continues out of the limelight as progress often lies in quietly trying to make a difference to others in effective, less visible ways.
At the root of what we do is a belief that folktales, in particular teaching-stories, provide huge and often unrecognised benefits for problem-solving and mental health.
Until the written word became culturally dominant – a relatively recent phenomenon – communities held and transmitted information, ideas, and histories in a way that made them more easily remembered, namely, through storytelling.
In this format, a vast treasure trove of knowledge was made available to every woman, man, and child. The system was so successful and became so commonplace that today most of us are barely aware of its existence – all around us, all the time.
The Scheherazade Foundation is working to harness and reactivate the ancient wisdom and knowledge often buried in folktales to allow it to do its magic. As we continue to stumble our way forward in a digital world, there is a danger that this invaluable repository of human know-how may be lost.
We believe that, used properly, stories can help with many issues facing humanity today, return balance to society, and teach us in the most remarkable ways.
Scheherazade is the wise heroine and principal storyteller of A Thousand and One Nights, the greatest collection of teaching-stories and folktales the world has ever known.
Like every bride of the bloodthirsty King Shahryar, she is destined to be executed the morning after her wedding. To save her own neck, and those of many more innocent women, Scheherazade uses her intelligence, wit, and storytelling skills night after night to placate her husband’s rage.
Weaving a fantastical world of imagination over months and years, Scheherazade finally brings peace to the kingdom by freeing the king from his ire, saving the lives of the hundreds of young women he might otherwise have slain.
The Scheherazade Foundation takes its inspiration from Scheherazade’s example. By learning from her out-of-the-box thinking and the wisdom within storytelling, we aim to bridge cultures and to resolve divisions within society. In this way, we believe, it is possible to find fresh solutions to universal problems – by learning from humanity’s most precious resource: the stories we tell.
Ethiopian Embassy, London
Royal Institute of Amazigh Culture
Brook & Mikie Douglas, Franc Roddam, Robert Fripp, the Tate Family, Eugene Conlon, Martha Rafferty, Olov Fäst, Jerzy Juszkiewicz, Ian Mcfarlane, Michael Gray, Chris Porter, Matt Roberts
Tilia Castanea, Ulrika Eriksson, Enrica Kalb, Hilko Schulte, Luisa Zanaboni, Kristin Centofanti, Christiane Gutbrod, Stuart Ambler, Safia Shah, Paul Berglund, Dwayne Henson, Ali Bendriss, Roberto Dublanc, Eveline Viehboeck, David Ault, Lisa Palmieri, Brad P. Severance, Beatriz de Moraes Vieira, Michael Scott Kennedy, Mark Tyrrell, Mathew Dallaway, Aleksandr Berezkin, Angelina Lopez, Heather Wimberly, George Collison, Richard Schuhmann, Ornella Senesi, Neil Ramshaw, Mark Melton, Gregory Maslow, Neil Tully, Oded Asherie, Kevan Bowkett, Ted May, Naomi, Carl Grove, Sergio Missana, Leigh Wells, Jeff George, Stuart Bathgate, Roger Clement, Miguel del Rey, Doris Odden, Shawn Fuller, Eve Levine, Manoharan Nachiyappan, Thom Carhart, Miroslav Papic, Chandra Baier, Mark Hedley, Thomas Merchant, Raheen Sacranie, Damian Hoare, Adam A. Pawlik, Esteve Mirella, Jacek Krankowski, Adolfo Vico, Leonardo Ritter, Peter P. Panasenko, Cecilia, JP Leonard, George Tonge, Troy Brunke, Neil Douglas Klotz, Ben Wachtel, Thomas Holm, Kevin Hughes, Alexandra Jolliffe, Sharon A. Romero, Christopher Daly, Nigel Hinton, Philippe, Francisco Martínez Dalmases, Adriano de Matteis, Rabah Massood, Frank Aston, Harvey Schussler.
Names in bold denote members of The Thousand & One Nights Society – a circle of supporters whose regular giving helps breathe life into our work.
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