du from Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Company (EITC) is pleased to announce it has been awarded the ‘People of Determination’ award at this year’s Gulf Sustainability & CSR Awards, held on the 20th February in Dubai.
The award recognises du’s BabNoor Project, an initiative to assist the ongoing development of communication skills and learning in children with a range of disabilities. This was achieved by distributing a free app to learning centres for children with special needs and then monitoring the effectiveness of the app to provide future improvements.
“We are proud to have been able to contribute once again to the future development of the youth of the UAE. Initiatives such as the BabNoor project reveal what can be achieved when people work together, and how technology can help enable them to make real improvements to people’s lives,” said Abdulwahed Juma, Executive Vice President of Brand and Corporate Communications, du.
The BabNoor app was developed in partnership with Flagship Projects FZ-LLC , and it is the first Arabic, cloud-based tablet application of its kind in the region and conforms to international communication standards for people with special needs. It has been designed to enable easy and effective communication between children, parents and teachers through the use of on-screen cards that can be combined to build sentences.
The BabNoor app features include an Arabic interface and vocabulary - enhanced by provision for localised dialects; cloud-based libraries of content and picture cards - with the ability for users to personalise or create their own cards; as well as ongoing updates to improve the app based on monitored case studies.
du distributed the BabNoor app to more than 2,000 students with special needs across the UAE and have plans to distribute to more. Through specialist monitoring of students’ progress and teachers’ feedback, du will continue to measure the impact that the app is having on the lives of its users.
