Founders
Eng Sawsan Gabra Ayoub Khalil
Born in 1963 in Alexandria, Sawsan Gabra studied civil engineering at the University of Alexandria, Egypt, and University of Delft, The Netherlands. She discovered in 1994-1996 that several Western media and activists had misrepresented incidents involving Muslim-Christian relations in Egypt and felt that Egyptian opinions had to be translated to show different views to a Western public, resulting in the foundation – with her husband - of the Religious News Service from the Arab-World in 1997, which was the predecessor to the Arab West Report.
Sawsan is also the founder of the Center for Intercultural Dialogue & Translation (CIDT) in Cairo and its Translation Coordinator. In this role Sawsan selects articles from the Egyptian press and manages the translation team. She assisted Father Dr. John Watson in his research for his publication “The Transfigured Cross; A Study of Father Bishoi Kamel” and Prof. Dr. Otto Meinardus in several of his studies. Sawsan has also been the World Servants country coordinator for Egypt since 1997. Sawsan has been married to Kees for 20 years and they have four children.
Drs Cornelis Hulsman
Originally from the Netherlands, Kees Hulsman has spent most of his life since 1976 in Egypt. He studied development sociology at Leiden University and subsequently occupied several positions in Dutch emigration organizations between 1987 and 1994.
Kees has been active in Egypt and the Middle East for over 30 years, promoting the need for improved understanding between Arab-Western cultures. In 1997 he and his wife Sawsan set up the Religious News Service from the Arab World (RNSAW) which became the Arab West Report (of which he is Editor-in-Chief) a weekly digest of articles from Egyptian Arab newspapers translated into English with expert commentaries.
A member of the Cairo Foreign Press Association (and currently also Secretary General), Kees has been accredited as a foreign journalist with the Egyptian Press Center since 1994.
| 
