Dubai Cares

Education is an integral part of a child's development

However, millions of children around the world are still unable to access quality education, especially those living in developing countries. In fact, at the time of Dubai Cares’ launch on September 19, 2007, there were 100 million children globally, most of them girls, who lacked access to education.

Despite the international community’s pledge to the United Nations Millennium Development Goal’s (MDG), the donor community collectively failed to deliver on aid commitments. In 2005, for instance, donors pledged to increase aid by US$50 billion by 2010. Current aid commitments point to an impending shortfall of US$30 billion against this pledge, almost half of it in sub-Saharan Africa. According to a 2009 report published by UNESCO’s Institute for Statistics, the aid financing gap for achieving basic education by 2015 is around US$7 billion annually.

His Highness Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, responded to this challenge with the creation of Dubai Cares, expressing his and the Emirate's commitment to help contribute to the global community’s development goals - namely, UN MDG 2, to guarantee universal primary education. In support of this goal, Dubai Cares is helping improve children’s access to primary education in developing countries with development programs in an integrated approach to include assistance in the areas of Infrastructure, Health & Nutrition, Quality of Education and Water & Sanitation.

With its comprehensive approach to development, Dubai Cares is helping reduce – ideally, eliminate - 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.

Dubai Cares has partnered with Care International, Médecins Sans Frontières, Microsoft, Oxfam, Room to Read, Save the Children, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, UNICEF and UNRWA. We currently have primary education programs in 23 countries and communities including Bangladesh, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Cambodia, Chad, Comoros Islands, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Haiti, Laos, Maldives, Mali, Mauritania, Nepal, Niger, Occupied Palestinian Territories, Pakistan, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Yemen and Zambia as well as Palestinian Refugees in Jordan and Lebanon. Under the leader of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed, Dubai's multicultural community is being mobilized through a number of innovative initiatives to support children’s primary education worldwide.

In 2008, Dubai Cares launched its Volunteer Campaign, offering one-week volunteer opportunities in specific international communities

The needs-based programs identified by Dubai Cares allowed volunteers an opportunity to work directly with local NGOs in targeted communities and assist them in implementing education projects. Volunteers, for example, were sent to Cambodia where they provided assistance in school construction and renovation. The Volunteer Campaign also provided the Dubai community an opportunity to volunteer at  schools throughout the Emirates and, as part of Volunteer Virtually, the opportunity for individuals and companies to share their time and expertise to support local and international NGOs electronically via the Internet.

In parallel to the Volunteer Campaign, Dubai Cares launched the Million Book Challenge, inviting school children aged 3-14 to collectively read 1 million books in 2 weeks. For each book read, Dubai Cares purchased a new book and donated it to children in need. Written in the local languages of select countries, books are being distributed to Bangladesh, Cambodia, Nepal, Laos, Zambia, South Africa and Sri Lanka in partnership with Room to Read, an acclaimed institution that was founded in 2000 and has built schools and libraries around the world.

Dubai Cares has also provided emergency relief in disaster situations

In response to the recent war in the Gaza Strip, Dubai Cares launched its “Volunteer for Gaza” campaign on January 14, 2009, calling upon residents throughout the UAE to help assemble 50,000 school kits and 50,000 hygiene kits, emergency aid destined for the Strip.  On January 28, 2009, immediately following the ceasefire, a joint Dubai Cares and La Chaine de L’Espoir medical and surgical mission was dispatched to the Gaza Strip to provide emergency medical care to Palestinian children injured during the war.    

On February 26, 2009, His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum dispatched his private plane to carry the school and hygiene kits assembled by volunteers, as well as a Dubai Cares technical crew to facilitate the transportation of the shipment to the Gaza borders. In addition to the kits, the shipment also included child-friendly foldable modular school facilities, which comprise 11 classrooms, two bathrooms for boys and girls and an administration room. Occupying approximately 800 square meters of land, the schools accommodate up to 440 students and can be assembled within eight hours.

Another example of a Dubai Cares relief mission is its intervention in Myanmar in 2008. Dubai Cares delivered over 60 tonnes of relief supplies, including 200 multi-purpose tents and sleeping bags, teaching materials and countless school supplies for the victims of Cyclone Nargis, which struck Myanmar, causing the worst natural disaster in the country’s recorded history.

2009 Focus on Water and Sanitation

In 2009, Dubai Cares mobilized international development institutions to ensure the integration and prioritization of water and sanitation in all education programs (WASH in schools), given children’s development is often contingent, to a large extent, on access to clean water.

Dubai Cares, in late January 2009, 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. Dubai Cares assembled UNICEF, Save the Children, Oxfam, Care International, Water Aid, International Research Center and Emory University, to work to define statistical indicators on the link between access to clean water and education and analyzed advantages among the approaches of Dubai Cares and its global partners to create a unified program model.

Ultimately, Dubai Cares works with its global partners to build primary education programs based on a community-led total water and sanitation approach, given school children are agents of change to reach the wider community and the school acts as the physical focal point for change.