FAQ

Launched in September 2007 by His Highness Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, Dubai Cares is a philanthropic organization dedicated to improving children’s access to quality primary education in developing countries. Dubai Cares works in countries with chronic deficiencies in primary education where it implements development programs that target the underlying causes preventing children from accessing quality primary education.  Dubai Cares’ vision is a world in which all children can go to school.

In partnership with international aid and development agencies, Dubai Cares is contributing to shaping the global agenda for effective and impactful interventions to achieve, by 2015, United Nations Millennium Development Goals 2 and 3 – namely, to guarantee universal primary education and to promote gender equality, respectively.

Dubai Cares programs are designed to reduce, ideally remove, obstacles that prevent children in developing countries from accessing quality primary education. Comprehensive in scope, the philanthropic organization’s primary education programs integrate four key components:  School Infrastructure; School Health & Nutrition; Water, Sanitation & Hygiene (WASH) in Schools; and Quality of Education.

Dubai Cares prioritizes its aid towards the worlds’ least developed countries based on the United Nation Statistics Division, focusing on both basic and education indicators including, but not limited to: Human development index, Extreme poverty incidence, Improved sanitation facilities, Malnutrition prevalence, Net school enrolment rate in primary school, Primary school attendance ratio, Parity Index Girls/Boys in primary school, and Literacy rate.

Countries with poor indicators and that are not on track to achieving their Millennium Development Goals, specifically goals 2 and 3 (to guarantee universal primary education and to promote gender equality, respectively) are strong candidates for receiving support from Dubai Cares.

Dubai Cares has partnerships with organizations such as The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Care International, GAIN, Global Network, Oxfam GB, Plan International, Room to Read, Save the Children, Scholastic and UNICEF. Additionally, Dubai Cares seeks to establish and maintain strategic relationships with likeminded organizations to co-fund programs that advance their distinct but related missions.

Dubai Cares has comprehensive primary education programs in 28 countries including Angola, Bangladesh, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Cambodia, Chad, Comoros Islands, Djibouti, Ghana, Haiti, India, Indonesia, Laos, Lesotho, Mali, Mauritania, Nepal, Niger, Occupied Palestinian Territories, Pakistan, Sierra Leone, Sir Lanka, South Africa, South Sudan, Sudan, Yemen, Zambia and with Palestinian refugees in Jordan and Lebanon.

The launch of Dubai Cares signaled the beginning of an eight-week fundraising campaign, during which the UAE’s  diverse community of corporations, social clubs, individuals and school children came together to donate AED 1.75 billion (USD 478 million). The amount was then doubled when, during Dubai Cares’ closing ceremony on November 25, 2007, His Highness Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum announced that he would personally match every Dirham raised in the campaign, bringing the total to AED 3.5 billion (USD 1 billion).

With the help of communities in the UAE, Dubai Cares is making a difference in the lives of children and their communities. To date, Dubai Cares is:

• Reaching more than 7 million beneficiaries in 28 countries 
• Building and renovating over 1,500 schools and classrooms
• Providing more than 1,000 water wells and potable water sources and constructing over 3,000 latrines in schools
• Providing nutritious food everyday to more than 490,000 children in schools
• Keeping more than 1.5 million children free from intestinal worms through its de-worming activities
• Distributing over 2 million books written in local languages
• Establishing over 6,600 Parent-Teacher Associations
• Training over 23,000 teachers