SmartLife is a NPO/NGO

A lot of kudos should go to our blue collar friends for the development we see around us. SmartLife reciprocates this courtesy by helping them become more empowered individuals; by educating them to walk towards a better tomorrow; by unleashing their dormant, hidden potential; by ensuring their future is more secure. SmartLife strives to be their wholesome partner in their progress.

Join hands with us

As a not-for-profit organization, working for the betterment of blue collar workers, help us by volunteering and giving your personal time for a cause.

Passion to help

If you have the selfless passion to help those less privileged

Creative Ideas

If you can offer your innovative ideas to take our projects a few notches higher

Personal Time

If you can give your personal time on Fridays to visit labour camps and add value to our blue collar friends

Special Skills

If you have special talents / skills that we can impart to our beneficiaries

Marketing Skills

If you can help us to spread for the good of community.

Management Skills

If you possess management skills, please contact us, we need you to manage, streamline and enhance our projects.

If you are looking for Volunteering or Internship

Kindly go through our projects and write to us mentioning your areas of interest

Join hands with us

Our Projects

All our projects are conceived and conceptualized after discussions with our beneficiaries and understanding their needs, what will empower them and what will add maximum value to their lives.

Each project goes through a regular review to ensure they are not mere feel-good projects for the volunteers / NGO, but do add genuine value.

SmartBuddy

SmartBuddy offers both mentoring and educational scholarships to children of blue collar workers. It is an exchange program where Dubai students are paired with native children back in their home countries to make each other’s lives more meaningful.

SmartReading

This is in line with the Year of Reading Initiative being promoted by HH Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai. Fridays will find our volunteers reaching out to camps encouraging the reading habit.

The project has a module in place with end objectives clearly laid out.

SmartBand

This is a platform for talented singers and dancers discovered through our SmartIdol program to showcase their talent. SmartBand has performed in various Government events and Corporate functions.

More details

SmartRelaxation

SmartRelaxation is a project that teaches yoga, meditation and breathing techniques to blue collar men and women. The follow up sessions every week is bound to make the practice a way of life.

SmartFitness

SmartFitness aims to offer them a fitter version of themselves, albeit the fun way, with a weekly session of aerobics, Zumba dancing, just swaying to music, jumps, loops, healthy run or anything equally enjoyable.

SmartCup

This is to do with games such as cricket, football, etc. that generates great interest. Each participating team has an equal mix of white and blue collar players.

A CSR initiative that any organisation can be proud of! More than 130 Corporates have participated in the past nine years.

More details

SmartIdol

This is an exciting platform provided to the blue collar work force to exhibit their talent in singing and dancing.

This increases their confidence levels, enables them to perform in front of an audience and to win prizes. Winners become a part of our SmartBand. A SmartIdol winner, a delivery boy is now a professional singer on Zee TV; surely a matter of great pride to us.

More details

SmartMedic

Through this project executed in partnership with Aster Group / DM Healthcare, we offer free health check up primarily to do with diabetes and hyper tension in labour camps. Our education stations teach them to mix their own rehydration drinks, proper lifting techniques and to keep an eye on their BMI levels.

SmartDistribution

We identify deserving labour camps and multiply their joy with corporate give away’s.

Bed linen, furniture, water coolers, footwear, food stuff are some of the free stuff donated in the past years. Particularly during the Holy month of Ramadan, we offer Iftar meal to various camps, through support from corporate outfits. Over the years, more than 200,000 people have benefited from our SmartDistribution.

SmartSkills

Smart Skills Workshop is a free training session for skilled / unskilled labourers which will enable them to develop and acquire skills, which in turn is bound to lead to self-development and lay the path for better productivity at work.

SmartWoman

This is a project exclusively designed for ladies, wherein we help them develop their hobbies such as knitting, sewing, gardening, quilting, cooking, origami, basket making, etc.

The idea behind this project is to enable the women to use their spare time creatively and productively, thus keeping negative thoughts if any at bay.

SmartJobs

SmartJobs is a project that connects unemployed blue collar friends to job opportunities in UAE. With both CV`s and job vacancies uploaded on our SmartJobs portal, the connection is established seamlessly with no recruiting agent and associated costs in the middle.

SmartElder

SmartElder is a program where we talk to them and guide them about how to conduct their lives post retirement, deal with old age problems, manage finances wisely to take care of the geriatric period, manage family relationships without animosity and similar.

SmartComputers

SmartComputers is a computer literacy program that teaches them basics of word, creating a document in Word or Excel, helping them make a PowerPoint presentation and similar.

SmartArabic

SmartArabic is to teach them the language of the land they work in; to appreciate the beauty of the Arabic language and thereby understand the local culture better.



This project is in the pipeline.

Our Associations

We have worked with almost all the corporates & organisations, just citing a few here.

Special Mentions:

Won the Dubai Quality Appreciation Award 2019
Project ‘AKSHAR’, which is the promotional activity done by FP7 for getSMART project made SmartLife as a CSR Brand,
leaving behind all commercial entities. SmartLife won 2nd position in UAE, 3rd position in The Middle East, 5th position in Middle East & Africa, 19th position in the World

Project ‘SAPNA WALL’, promotional video done by FP7 won 2 Golds, 2 Silvers, 1 Bronze Awards

Community Development Authority

Licensed as NGO by CDA since 2013

Consulate General of India, Dubai

Always a well-wisher of SmartLife

Dubai Quality Appreciation Award 2019

Won the Dubai Quality Appreciation Award 2019

Sprite

Official Partner in SmartCup

HSBC

Supporting partner for the blue collared community

The New York Times

Published half page article on SmartCup

CNN

Shot " telecasted 10 mins documentary on SmartCup

Engage Dubai

Member of ‘Engage Dubai’ by Dubai Chamber of Commerce

Eton Institute

Partner in Smart Reading

Eton Institute

Partner in Smart Reading - Arabic

FP7/DXB

Official Support Company

Dans Institute

Partner in SmartIdol

Target Gym

Partner in SmartFitness / SmartRelaxation

The Lighthouse Cohort

CSR Partner

Dubai Eye

Live interview several times

Dubai Lynx

Won various awards for our project AKSHAR

Dubai One

Live interview several times

Dubai Television

Live interview several times

Effie Awards

Won various awards for our project SAPNA WALL

Emirates NBD

Partner in our project SOUL FOR SOLE

Gulf News

Serveral articles " live interviews

Gulf Today

Serveral articles " live interviews

Khaleej Times

Official Partner in SmartCup for past 9 years

The National

Serveral articles " live interviews

About Us

We are not just making their lives a little better, a little more comfortable, slightly more empowered. But, we are also richly rewarding ourselves as a community. This might be through a positive action, a mere handshake or just in the peace that comes from knowing that we made a difference in someone’s life.

Video Intro

SmartLife is a NPO/NGO

Although it is slightly hard to notice, the glamour and skyscrapers of the city of Dubai owe its magnificence to a bunch of people who are often forgotten. The group of workers who work hard day in and day out under the persistent sun of the place we can no more call a desert. Clad in fluorescents and adorned by numerous beads of sweat, these people populate in large numbers. They come from almost all the South Asian and African countries looking to touch dreams that are perhaps very much out of their reach.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is where we come in.

SmartLife is a NPO/NGO that was envisaged a few years ago, by some key members. Despite the infancy interims of age, we are supported today by many – ranging from business school alumni, heads of many Financial/ Advertising/ FMCG/ GIS organizations, etc.

Our basic aim and objective, therefore, is your average blue collar worker. His/her development and overall benefit is what we consider our priority. Whether that’s by setting them up with free English language lessons every week or by providing mentoring, even occasional trips outside the labour camps. We consider it a small and satisfying way of helping the blue collared workers take a step out of their routine and realise their true potential.

Communicating the idea, and spreading the message is an essential and therefore primary goal. We’ve had full page ads/articles in local newspapers, magazines, TV stations, and been on air several times. We have also made use of social media to communicate our cause and attract sufficient support for the same.

We invite organizations, and like-minded professionals to contribute in developing this idea and offering a part of their resources to help source this venture. In this regard, we plan to conduct ideation camps that will see various ideas being exchanged. The various project teams will then ensure that these ideas are tested out and inculcated into the operations of SmartLife.

It is to be noted that we work in full adherence with the law of the land and are registered with the Community Development Authority of Dubai.

Finally, as we sign off, we would like to remind anyone reading this that we are not just making their lives a little better, a little more comfortable, slightly more empowered. But, we are also richly rewarding ourselves as a community. This might be through a positive action, a mere handshake or just in the peace that comes from knowing that we made difference in someone’s life.

Our projects are developed over eleven years of working with blue collar workers, each project will fall into any one of the following categories

  • Education
  • Health
  • Sports
  • Talent
  • Skills
  • Personal Care
Interested to join hands with us?

Our Achievements

People got educated
9,000+
No of Iftar meals distributed so far
500,000+
No of people gone through health checkup
3,000+
No of singers/dancers auditioned in camps
2,500+
Blue & White collars enganged in Cricket
2,000+

Faqs

Among the glitz and glamour of the city of Dubai, often we forget about the group of workers who work hard every day. Clad in fluorescents, these people populate in large numbers. They come from South Asian and African countries to the United Arab Emirates in the hopes to make their dreams a reality. Since its launch in 2009, SmartLife has been working tirelessly to better the lives of the blue collar workers working in the UAE with the help of government entities, business school alumni, heads of many financial, advertising, FMCG and GIS organizations. As of today, we have twelve project initiatives, each targeted to help enrich the lives of the blue collar friends.
In the UAE, SmartLife involves residents and citizens through volunteering opportunities, helping to raise awareness, fundraising, and help in sponsoring project initiatives.
Over the last eleven years, we have helped educate more than 9,000 people, offered scholarships to 15 children, aided more than 3,000 people to get free health checkup and have discovered more than 2,500 talented singers and dancers.
Students interns should clock in 30 hours of volunteering under a SmartLife mentor to merit a certificate. Contact us for further details.
We can certainly do much better if we have more helping hands. If you are interested in contributing your spare time to the less privileged community, please send a mail to us.
You can officially apply for internship mentioning your skill set, period available etc. We will assign you an appropriate task. Once the task is accomplished successfully, we can offer you a certificate.
If you are a Philanthropist, you can support any of our projects by funding. If you possess any special skill sets like Singing, Dancing etc. you can teach our blue collar friends.

How do we work?

Our Year calendar is fixed 1 year ahead.
We work towards the upcoming projects as separate teams.
In all our projects, we involve our blue collar team members in all level of execution to make sure whether we work in a direction which will really benefit them.

1

MEET

2

PLAN

3

GET APPROVALS

4

FIND RESOURCES

5

REHEARSE

6

EXECUTE

Meet The Team

Advisory Panel

Tarek Miknas

Executive Member

Siddharth Balachandran

Executive Member

Venkatraman K

Honorary Member

Nezar Khan

Honorary Member

Vinod Mehra

Honorary Member

S. Venkatesh

Honorary Member

Board of Directors

Arun Kumar Krishnan

President

Abhijeet Oak

Vice President

Mahejabin Kamruddin Baldiwala

General Secretary

Rajan Bulchand

Treasurer

Adel Edris Mohamed Sharif Al Awadhi

Executive Director

Abdulrahman Y. Al Raeesi

Executive Director

Yasmin Ahmed

Executive Director - Legal & Humanitarian Support

Manjula Ramakrishnan

Executive Director - Corporate Communications

Rex Prakash Emmanuel

Executive Director - Project Audit, Volunteer Management

Stephen Allwyn Moras

Director -Finance

Suresh Kumar

Director -Welfare, IT & Procurement

Swaroopa Josephine

Director - Procurement, Social Media

Manju Mondal

Director - Blue Collar Representation & Logistics

Project Leads

SmartReading

Manjula Ramakrishnan

SmartBuddy

Scholorship: Ramesh Anantharaman; IELTS: Arun Pradeep; Buddies: Radostina Asenova; Teachers: Menka Hemrajani

SmartIdol / SmartBand

Rohit Gupta, Navya Sajeevan, Alberto Perego

SmartCup

Eyamini Anbalagan, Raju Bulchand

SmartDistribution

Mahejabin, Abhijeet Oak, Suresh Kumar & Saleem Badnatti

SmartMedic

Tarun Gupta, Nisha Patel, Anitha Dayanand & Radhika Annamaraju

SmartRelaxation

Amit Arora, Archana Bangera

SmartWoman

Rosen Iyer

SmartElder

Raju Bulchand, Vasudev Rao

SmartFitness

Wafir Manakad, Tony Fang

SmartSkills

Anbu

SmartJobs

Rosen Iyer

SmartComputers

Arnav Shah, Anusuya

SmartArabic

Fadi Naccour

Founders

Arun Kumar Krishnan

Co Founder

Suresh Kumar

Co Founder

Stephen Allwyn Moras

Co Founder

Balaji Jagadeesan

Co Founder

Swaroopa Josphine

Co Founder

Rex Prakash Emmanuel

Co Founder

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Contact Info

PO Box 6834, MCN Hive, Dubai
P: +971 54 432 0123 / +971 50 450 7946‬ / +971 55 476 3786
E: admin@smartlifefoundation.org