The Give Initiative Joins Dubai Cares

In the year 2014, to mark the tenth anniversary of the founding of Innoventures Education, the Gift of Innoventures Education (GIVE) initiative was launched. GIVE enables all stakeholders to collaborate and provide ongoing support to specific causes identified by our students.

At Innoventures Education, our most important role is to inspire children to develop worthy values and skills to become responsible learners. One important feature of GIVE is to contribute to international and local communities. The students of Innoventures Education have decided that GIVE should focus on providing access to clean drinking water and education in the less developed parts of the world.

Since the launch of GIVE and in partnership with Dubai Cares, students across all the Innoventures Education schools and nurseries have raised funds which have been used to build three schools in Nepal. The aim was to provide a safe, durable and comfortable learning environment for over 300 students and countless adults of the nearby villages. The great benefit of these schools is that they are able to host lessons during the monsoon season and also at night which was possible in the past.

Some of our students and accompanying teachers from across the schools visited Nepal several times to physically begin construction and lay the foundations of our first school and also to complete the finishing touches. They were supported by BuildOn, an American philanthropic organisation that has successfully constructed schools in third world regions for the last 25 years. Whilst there, our students and teachers lived with the communities they were helping and had the opportunity to experience the harsh living conditions and economic hardships of the villagers. It was a life-changing experience for these students to be able to interact and make a positive and lasting impact on others.

This year, after consultation with Dubai Cares, it was decided that GIVE through Innoventures Education would adopt a school in Malawi. Consistently ranked among the world’s 20 least developed countries on the UN’s Human Development Index, Malawi has long been challenged by economic stagnation and a lack of access to education. Over 50% of the country’s population live below poverty line facing epidemics of AIDS, malaria and other medical problems due to the lack of sanitized water. By empowering the youth and the less fortunate through education, the UN foresees significant progress for the country.

BuildOn, which has already built 295 school in Malawi since 1993, broke ground for a new Primary School in Kasungu in May 2019. We aspire that some students will travel to the village and complete the building of the school during the academic year 2019-2020.

Since 2014, all our schools and nurseries have raised AED 882,332 for the Adopt-A-School project and Water for Life.  The Board of Directors at Innoventures Education matched this collection bringing the total contribution to AED 1,764,664.

We wish to thank all our parents and students for their generous contributions towards GIVE to make a difference in the lives of many children across the world. Through education, we give children - regardless of their gender, nationality, race or religion - the opportunity to become positive contributors to society.

We look forward to your continued support in the coming academic year to enhance this philanthropic project of Innoventures Education.

Together we can make a humanitarian difference!

 

Community Involvement  

Every year at RIS we support our community through charitable events and community celebrations- whether that be during Ramadan for our Iftar celebrations, National Day celebrations, International Day, Reading with Dad or Diwali, all families from our school community are welcome. At RIS we value the importance of our school community and understand that as a school we are here as more than educators. Raffles International School is a community, a family, where you belong.