Dubai Cares

Dubai Cares is a UAE-based philanthropic establishment 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, which aims to improve children’s access to quality primary education in developing countries.  Dubai Cares plays the role of a strategic coordinator, actively engaging with international aid and development agencies to implement comprehensive development programs that promote an integrated approach towards education, providing assistance in the areas of infrastructure, quality of education, nutrition & health and water and sanitation. Dubai Cares’ programs are implemented in countries with the highest gap in primary education. Dubai Cares is mobilizing local communities in the UAE through fundraising and volunteer initiatives that support children’s primary education worldwide.  

Dubai Cares implements programs that address our full integrated approach of education and that include assistance in the areas of water and sanitation, health and nutrition, infrastructure and quality of education.  With its comprehensive approach to development, Dubai Cares is helping reduce the underlying causes that prevent children’s access to quality primary education and is providing individuals the tools to overcome both personal and social challenges and to make concrete contributions to sustainable development.

In 2009, Dubai Cares is taking a lead in advocating the full integration of water and sanitation, a key pillar of the integrated approach, as part of its global campaign to ensure a comprehensive education solution. In late January 2009, Dubai Cares chaired the first in a series of roundtable forums in New York on the link between Water and Sanitation and primary education programs in the developing world. Together with UNICEF, Save the Children, Oxfam, Care International and Water Aid, International Research Center and Emory University, Dubai Cares is working to establish empirical links between the access to clean water and education and is analyzing advantages among current practices and approaches to create a unified program model. This year’s focus on water and sanitation will be a key focal point of Dubai Cares’ future programs and determine the nature of its future partnerships with existing and new partners.

Dubai Cares utilizes a set of criteria to guide the selection of countries receiving Dubai Cares assistance – namely, presence of prospective partners with existing primary education programs; UN MDG classification {goals 2 and 3}, Global Education for All, UNESCO and UN Human Development Index, as well as World Bank indicators for development, existing funding gaps on education, sustainability, and potential for highest on the ground impact.

Dubai Cares has partnerships with global NGOs, aid agencies and private corporations, including Care International, Médecins Sans Frontières, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Microsoft, Oxfam, Room to Read, Save the Children, UNICEF and UNRWA.

Since its launch in September 2007, Dubai Cares has initiated projects in 20 countries and communities including Bangladesh, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Cambodia, Chad, Comoros Islands, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Laos, Maldives, Mauritania, Nepal, Niger, Occupied Palestinian Territories, Pakistan, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Yemen and Zambia as well as Palestinian Refugees in Jordan and Lebanon.

The launch of Dubai Cares signaled the beginning of an eight-week fundraising campaign, during which Dubai’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 doubled when, during Dubai Cares’ closing ceremony on November 25, 2007, HH 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).