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2016 One Show - Cross-Platform

Project Akshar (Alphabets)

Agency FP7/DXB / Dubai

Client SmartLife
BACK TO RESULTS

Annual ID

CP16082M

About the Work

In Dubai, learning English will help its many labourers get better jobs and salaries. But with average monthly salaries of $220, and a life of 12-hours labour everyday, they neither have the money nor the time to educate themselves. SmartLife, an NGO for Dubai's labourers, wanted to help them improve their status and quality of life. We created Project Akshar (Alphabets), where we set out to graduate Dubai's labourers from blue-collar to white-collar. To encourage labourers to register and enroll into our free English classes, we showed them how easy it is to learn English. Using effective visual learning techniques, we took words that are useful to them, wrote their English phonetic pronounciations in the Hindi script, and combined them with their visual representation, to create words that teach them English through their own language. Labour camps became educational camps. Transport buses became school buses. Construction sites became learning sites.