Project Akshar (Alphabets)
SmartLife
Issue 35 | June 2015
Agency
FP7 Dubai
Creative Team
Executive Creative Director Paul Banham Associate Creative Directors Josephine Younes Nayaab Rais Art Director Josephine Younes Copywriter Nayaab Rais Visual Artist Lokesh Karekar Senior Designer Sameer Ketkar Design Director Erol Salcinovic
Production Team
Head of Creative Services Khaled Hamza Studio Artists Kashif Ahmed Amit Borawake Senior Digital Designers Pankaj Nainwal Kim Anandani Production Consultants Dolly Saidy Mario Atallah Photographer, W/Studio Mohammad Hajjar Editor Aurangzaib Zafar
Other Credits
Managing Director Sasan Saeidi Head of Strategic Planning & Insights Tahaab Rais Creative and Connections Strategy Tahaab Rais Business Director, UM Dubai Jihad Subai Account Director and Channel Concepts Vicky Kriplani
Date
February 2014 - February 2015
Background
SmartLife was an NGO created to help improve the lives of Dubai's many migrant labourers. Learning English would help these people get better jobs and salaries but with average monthly incomes of just $220 and a hard life of 12-hour shifts, they neither had the money nor the time to educate themselves.
The brief was to have an idea which would improve their status and quality of life.
Idea
Akshar meant 'alphabets' in Hindi, the language of most workers, so Project Akshar was a campaign using a familiar alphabet to teach workers words and phrases in English.
Free English classes were launched. Now the task was to encourage labourers to register and enrol by showing them how easy it was to learn English.
Useful words were written in Hindi spelling out their English phonetic pronunciations. These were combined with visual representations to help readers remember them.
Hundreds of words like these, designed to look like school notepads, were placed at key touch points in the labourers' daily journeys across Dubai.
Dubai was turned into a blackboard. Labour camps became education camps. Transport buses became school buses. Construction sites became learning sites. Mundane routines became inspiring journeys. Learning flashcards, an Interactive karaoke song, print ads in vernacular media and bus shelter ads around labour camps spread the word(s). A special edition book was printed to help raise funds.
People who wanted to register could make a missed call and be phoned back so it did not cost them money.
A social media app got people to suggest important new words for the project.
Results
5,000+ students have graduated in the project to date. 28% have cleared job interviews for white-collar jobs.
12% have launched businesses back home. 23% got promoted to white-collar jobs from their existing blue-collar jobs.
37% got higher salaries; some progressed from 800 AED ($220) per month to 8,000 AED ($2200) per month in just one year. Project Akshar (Alphabets) was invited to be a part of the Dubai Government's 'Happy Dubai' initiative.
All costs were pro bono courtesy SmartLife's partners.The idea generated earned media worth $230,000 across TV, Press, Radio and Social Media.
Our Thoughts
The first thing that impresses about this campaign is how beautiful the phonetic words are. Combining a visual representation and the phonetic pronunciation means every one needed care and attention. Through the craft skills alone it suggests that learning English will lead to a more sophisticated and even pleasurable understanding of the world.
Berlitz language schools did something like this a few years ago in Germany but this has such great finesse it fully deserves the awards it has already won locally.
Also nice to see my old pal Paul Banham enjoying his time in the sun.