wasl Properties launches unique charity and educational community support online campaign in Ramadan

wasl Properties, a wholly owned subsidiary of wasl today announced a unique Ramadan campaign contest that supports the group’s publicly stated goals of community service, charitable and educational support.  Weekly contest winners will donate AED 10,000. to the Dubai charity of their choice and the Grand Prize winner will receive up to AED 50,000 for 2011/2012 in school fees.  wasl will donate AED 10,000 to all eight participating charities.

“Connect with the Community” painting contest (http://ramadan.wasl.ae) is centered on life in the artist’s community and helping others. The artists are invited to express their feelings about their community and the spirit of helping others in artworks. The entry is open to children aged 4-18 and limited to the nearly 20,000 wasl residential tenants and their families. 

When asked why this unusual campaign, Ms. Zainab Sharaf GM of Property Management replied: “As one of the largest Property Managers in Dubai and the region, we have a long term, strong commitment to support the community. As a responsible corporate citizen, we support charities, education, environmental issues and all initiatives that will benefit our city and country. We believe that all good work should start with us in our home base – in this case our residential tenants and their families.”

Commenting further, Ms. Sharaf said: “It is important for us to remember that good community services always start with awareness of the needs of those less fortunate. This Ramadan, we and our tenants will focus on those needs and help those charitable institutions that serve our community members that are in need.”

Explaining a bit more about the “Connect with the Community” contest, Ms. Shaima Al Sowaidi, Marketing and Communications Manager said:  “This initiative is very focused on an important target group –nearly 20,000 resident families in our many properties spread over Dubai.  They come from every part of society and every nationality.  We see this as an outreach program to a broad segment of our society where we can have direct and immediate communication with the participants.”

Commenting on the structure of the contest, Ms. Al Sowaidi remarked: “We want to raise awareness of Charity and what charities are part of our community specifically to children. We believe that this is important at an early stage. It is not often that a child will get to make a major donation in his and his family’s name to charity – but this is the chance that they can do that – just through painting their feelings about their community. Voting is open to the public although the actual contest is limited to our wasl Properties residents. We are all confident that the result of this initiative will be positive for the children, the charities and the community.”

The wasl “Connect with the Community” painting contest opens for artwork submissions on August 1. After online registration http://ramadan.wasl.ae, artworks can be submitted by each artist weekly for the four weeks of Ramadan. Final Grand Prize winner will be announced after the Eid Holiday.