2015 Winners & Shortlists

The Brief

In Dubai, learning English will help its many labourers get better jobs and salaries. But with average monthly salaries of $220, and a hard life of 12-hour work shifts, they neither have the money nor time to educate themselves. SmartLife, an NGO for Dubai's labourers, wanted to help them improve their status and quality of life. So, we created Project Akshar (Alphabets), where we set out to graduate Dubai's labourers from blue collar to white collar.

Creative Execution

They didn’t have the money. So we launched free English classes, where corporate sponsors funded the educational material, schools and camp management teams shared classroom space, and white-collared professionals volunteered their time to become their teachers. And they didn’t have the time. So we showed them how easy it was to learn English, Hence, the direct communication using an effective learning technique made them pick up English words along their daily journeys. In the spirit of free English classes, we shared a number they could give a missed call on and SmartLife called them back to enroll them.

Describe the creative solution to the brief/objective.

We launched free English classes. And to encourage registrations, we designed a learning system to show how easy learning English words could be. We turned Dubai into a blackboard for them. Labour camps became Educational camps. Transport buses became School buses. Construction sites became Learning sites. Mundane routines became Inspiring journeys. We shared a number to reach us at – again, for free via a missed call. We also created: Learning flashcards, a Karaoke song, Vernacular newspaper print ads, Bus shelter ads around labour camps, a special edition book to generate funds and a social media app that increased awareness.

Results

We’re transforming their lives of labour into lives of learning: (1) 4000+ students graduated. (2) 28% cleared job interviews for white-collar jobs. (3) 12% started businesses back home. (4) 23% got promoted to white-collar jobs from existing blue-collar jobs in the same companies. (5) 37% got higher salaries including a labourer graduating from 800 AED (~$220) to 8000 AED (~$2200) per month. (6) The project is invited to be a part of the Government’s ‘Happy Dubai’ initiative. (7) All costs were pro bono ($0) courtesy our partners. (8) Unprecedented earned media worth $230,000 across TV, Press, Radio and Social Media.