Draft:Community Jameel

Community Jameel (Arabic: مجتمع جميل) is a Saudi private philanthropic science funder, established in 2003.

Community Jameel funds a network of research centres focused on economics, artificial intelligence, data modelling and technology, working on issues including poverty, food insecurity, climate change, disease and mental health. Community Jameel has also supported humanitarian agencies in emergencies.

Community Jameel is funded by the Jameel family from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Although private and with limited financial disclosure, Community Jameel is one of the biggest foreign philanthropic funders of UK science and regularly cited as one of the leading philanthropic institutions from the Middle East and the Arab world.

History
The Jameel family is one of the Arab world's richest families. They own Abdul Latif Jameel, the world's biggest distributor of Toyota, and are investors in Rivian, among other companies.

In 2003, Community Jameel was founded by Mohammed Jameel KBE as a social enterprise with starting capital of SAR 300 million from Abdul Latif Jameel. It was initially called Abdul Latif Jameel Community Service Programmes and later Abdul Latif Jameel Community Initiatives. In 2014, the organisation changed its name to Community Jameel.

Arts philanthropy
Community Jameel launched the Art Jameel initiative in 2003, later spinning it out as a separate organisation in 2016. Activities during the period up to 2016 included the $9.8 million refurbishment of the Victoria and Albert Museum's gallery of Islamic art, renamed the Jameel Gallery, and the launch of the Jameel Prize at the V&A. During the refurbishment of the Jameel Gallery, Mohammed Jameel supported the 2004-2005 international tour of an exhibition of the V&A's Islamic art collection, called 'Palace and mosque: Islamic art from the Victoria and Albert Museum', to the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texs, Setagaya Art Museum in Tokyo, and the Millennium Gallery in Sheffield.

Research centres
The Community Jameel portfolio primarily comprises laboratories and research centres at leading universities around the world. These include:


 * The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) at MIT, which was funded by Community Jameel with three endowments in 2005, and whose co-founders, Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee, won the 2019 Nobel Prize in Economics (together with Michael Kremer). Community Jameel has collaborated with J-PAL and the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB) on embedding evidence-based policy labs with IsDB member state governments.
 * The MIT Jameel Clinic, launched in 2018 and led by Regina Barzilay, James J. Collins and Dimitris Bertsimas, with Nobel laureate Phillip Sharp as chairman. The Jameel Clinic team has used deep learning to discover new antibiotics, halicin and abaucin, and developed AI tools for predicting cancer, including Mirai for breast cancer and Sybil for lung cancer.
 * The Jameel Institute at Imperial College London, launched in 2019 with a gift of around £25 million and led by Neil Ferguson. Community Jameel and Kenneth C. Griffin jointly supported the Jameel Institute's initiative for the economics of pandemic preparedness at the Temasek Foundation's Philanthropy Asia Summit in Singapore in 2022.

Arab Science Foundation
In 2005, Community Jameel launched the Arab Science and Technology Foundation in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, with a $1 million per year contribution. Inspired by the National Science Foundation in the United States, the ASTF grants funding of $50,000 to 20 proposals a year, selected on merit.

Scholarships
Community Jameel has also established the Jameel-Toyota scholarship for undergraduate students at MIT, and the Andrea Bocelli Foundation–Community Jameel scholarship for students of opera at the Royal College of Music.

Humanitarian support
Community Jameel has provided humanitarian organisations in emergencies, including: the Saudi Red Crescent Authority; in response to the COVID-19 pandemic;    the 2020 Beirut explosion; and the 2023 Israel–Hamas war.

Approach
Community Jameel is considered one of the top family foundations in the Middle East. Community Jameel is known for its collaborative and partnership-oriented approach. The Jameel family's philanthropy has been described as an "exceptional" model is Islamic giving. Community Jameel has a focus on data- and evidence-based policymaking and decision-making in addressing global development challenges, and on addressing geographic inequities in science funding.