Tag: india

HH Sheikha Arwa Al Qassimi Sponsors Photography Exhibition for the Visually Impaired Enthusiasts at Press Club, Mumbai

Sightsavers is an association that aims at preventing unnecessary blindness, restore sight, and campaign for the social inclusion and equal treatment of persons with disabilities. Recently, the organization coordinated a photography workshop for the admirers of photography done by blind persons at the Press Club in Mumbai.

The workshop, which was named ‘The Blind View’ was the pioneer in the series of Sightsavers’ advocacy events held across the country. The workshop was organized in collaboration with Beyond Sight Foundation. Her Highness Sheikha Arwa Al Qassimi also sponsored the event.

Mr. Partho Bhowmick, the founder of Beyond Sight Foundation (BSF), stated that his foundation was delighted to have conducted such a special workshop for the upcoming photographers in collaboration with Sightsavers. The workshop’s participants were given training on how to click photos depicting their everyday life. The finest of those photographs will be presented in an exhibition that is to be held later in the year. The core purpose of this creative initiative was to create a better perception of blindness and to inspire the participants to have confidence in themselves and pursue their goals.

The workshop’s participants were trained on taking great pictures by accomplished experts. In attendance was the popular blind photographer, Bhavesh Patel. Recently, Bhavesh did a photo shoot for a Lux advertisement with Katrina Kaif, a Bollywood actress.

The Senior Manager, Brand & Communications- Sightsavers, Mr. Amal Guptaacknowledged that the company’s motto in organizing the workshop was to highlight the talents of disabled persons. In addition, the company sought to create an empowering environment in which the visually impaired can work to attain economic independence instead of being dependants.

The CEO of Sightsavers (India) – Mr. RN Mohanty, was contented with the evident passion the participants had for the photography workshop. He expressed his goodwill for the participants by wishing them“the best in their future endeavors.”

HH Sheikha Arwa Al Qassimi Sponsors Photography Exhibition, The Blind View

The use of cell-phones, laptops, TVs and other electronic gadgetry are an essential part of our lives. Nowadays, people tend to spend most of their time with these visual devices. In a civilization that is as vision-centric as ours, it is usually difficult for sighted persons to comprehend a blind life. However, there is more to being blind than what we see, and our collective subconscious needs a precision surgery to alter our perspective on blindness. The Blind View is a Sightsavers’ initiative that is meant to be the precision surgery that changes our perspective on blindness. Persons that are visually impaired make use of other senses to create visions. What if sighted persons could visualize what blind persons see?

Photography serves as an extension of sight. Sighted people see photography simply as a way to capture moments and scenes. What if they realized that sight supersedesthe simple act of seeing? What if they appreciated moments, textures, and odors through photographs? What if they learnt that there is a dissimilar kind of photography that they are entirely unacquainted with- a unique form of photography that is upheld by the blind?

The Blind View aims to fascinate and astonish people with highly influential events and connections to increase understanding on the abilities of blind persons. The Blind may have deteriorating eyesight, but that is often compensated by a better understanding of their environments using other senses. The Blind View project highlights these realities and confronts the prevalent perceptions on disability.

Sightsavers, in collaboration with Beyond Sight Foundation a photography series for those living with vision impairment, will carry out two photography workshops for blind persons in Mumbai (June) and Bangalore (September). The photos taken in these workshops will be displayed soon afterwards in public exhibitions in the two cities and also in online virtual galleries- all concluding in a gala event in Delhi. Supported by strong online and offline promotional activities, voting for the best photos by the public, and numerous sensitization exercises, the movement will increase awareness about Sightsavers and the significance of the social inclusion of blind people.

A Photography Exhibition Sponsored by HH Sheikha Arwa Al Qassimi for the Visually Impaired

Mumbai, 1st August 2015: Sightsavers is an organization that works to reduce the incidence of preventable loss of sight,promote sight restoration as well assupport the social inclusion and equal rights for the disabled.The organization recently held an exhibition of pictures taken by blind photographers. The exhibition took place at the Orbit Mall (Malad), Mumbai. The collaboration of the Sightsavers alongside Beyond Sight Foundation contributed to the successful display of photography done by visually impaired photographers in a workshop supported by Her Highness SheikhaArwa Al Qassimi.
Mr. RN Mohanty CEO, Sightsavers India stated that the initiative aimed at changing the perception that the visually impaired are a liability to their families and that the society is oblivious of the challenges faced by the blind. He added that Sightsavers intended to disapprove that perception and show that the visually impaired are capable of being independent and pursuing their interests.
Mr. ParthoBhowmick, Founder, Beyond Sight Foundation (BSF) remarked that the exhibition could create a linkbetween the abled and physically challenged persons. He added that it would help people to better perceive the world from the visually disadvantaged persons’ point of view.
The photography workshop was held on June, this year. Participants received training on ideal picture clicking under the instruction of proficient experts. The famous visually impaired photographer Bhavesh Patel, who recently did a photo shoot with Katrina Kaif, a Bollywood actress,was among the experts who took part in the workshop. The photographer is well known for hisphotoshoot with Bollywood Actress Katrina Kaif.Bhavesh clarified that the visually impaired felt the need to be treated like ordinary persons in the society. Additionally, he emphasized that the disadvantaged are part of the society. Thus, they should not be sympathized with.
Upon its successfulcompletion, the workshop in Mumbai saw 20 portraitson seven different themes being shortlisted in which blind participants were clicked by their counterparts while carrying out a sequence of interesting activities. Every picture illustrates a unique story representing diverse aspects of being blind.
According to,Amal Gupta, Senior Manager,Brand and communications-Sightsavers, the exhibition served to portray the lives and abilities of blind persons; their day to day activities such as going to work, etc.
Sightsavers is a registered organization that aims at preventing the loss of sight,promote sight restoration as well assupportthe social inclusion and equivalent rights for the disabled. The organization has been operating in India since 1966, where it has reached 53.4 million people. It has carried out 36.2 million eye treatments and 4.9 million eye treatments.

Free philanthropy school sets sights on nonprofit sector

In the first initiative of its kind globally, Saudi Arabia’s Al Dabbagh Group is seeking to tackle one of the biggest challenges facing non-government organisations (NGOs) globally: human capacity.

The group has set up Philanthropy University, a free online education platform aimed at supporting the NGO community worldwide. The university, which is receiving on average 1,000 sign ups per day, offers courses designed to build skills and knowledge to address NGOs’ most pressing needs and topics of interest.

“The initiative addresses a very urgent issue. The world is full of challenges, ranging from health to children, the environment; you name it, and this is a product of lack of adequate policies, governance, and a private sector lacking the will to address social concerns,” said Amr Al Dabbagh, chairman and CEO of Al Dabbagh Group.

“This massive vacuum has been filled by millions of NGOs supporting billions of people worldwide. They face the challenge of capacity and how they scale, measure their impact, and sustain their work and offering. Philanthropy University fills that vacuum and offers a global free online platform to support NGOs worldwide with their capacity building.”

The university offers courses on scalability, fundraising, capacity gap and strategic impact, among others. It has collaborated with UC Berkeley Haas and employed “the crème de la crème of faculty members” from different universities and institutions, said Al Dabbagh.

Among its faculty members is Paul Brest, who chairs the curriculum committee at Philanthropy University, is former president of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and is the Dean Emeritus at Stanford Law School. Brest is teaching a course titled Essentials of Non-Profit Strategy.

The courses, also known as MOOCs, or massive open online courses, start in September, with seven options to choose from. The university plans to add more each year, adjusting them to meet NGOs requirements. There is no cap on the number of enrollees.

“Our finish line is to impact NGOs supporting 100 million people by 2020,” said Al Dabbagh.

Participants have joined from more than 100 countries, with big representation from India, China, and Africa. Half of them between the age group of 24 and 34, and an equal split between female and male participation. The university is reaching out to homegrown NGOs that require assistance; however, any individual can sign up for the courses.

“We’ve been supporting local NGOs dealing with homegrown challenges and problems. We are bringing our value proposition and UC Berkeley Haas to the doorstep of local NGOs whether small, medium or large,” he said.

The Al Dabbagh Group is a family business operating under three principles – giving, earning and sustaining. Its UK-based Stars Foundation supports NGOs in countries with the highest under-five mortality rate, and helps disadvantaged children in areas of protection, education, health and WASH (water and sanitation).

Its initiatives include the annual Philanthropreneurship Forum, which debates the next generation of best practices in philanthropy.

On financing, Al Dabbagh said the group represented the founding investors, but will welcome other co-investors in the future. He declined to mention the size of the investment, but said it was significant.

“We are strategic philanthropists. We are not chequebook philanthropists. We like to talk about impact rather than how much the cheque value and the dollar sign are, and this is something that I have been advocating,” he said.

“We hear lots of talk about how much x, y and z are putting on the table in terms of endowments and donations, but very little talk about impact and how they are measuring the impact of their dollar.”

Al-Dabbagh Group, headquartered in Jeddah, was founded by former Saudi Minister of Agriculture Sheikh Abdullah Al-Dabbagh in 1962. It employs more than 13,000 people across 57 companies in more than 60 countries. It has business interests in areas of food, housing, petroleum, auto services and packaging. The family’s philosophy of giving started with the founder and has become part of its modus operandi.

“Since 1962 when my father started the family business, for every dollar we’ve been distributing as dividend, we matched it with a philanthropic dollar. This is a tradition that we have religiously followed over the last 50 years,” said Al Dabbagh.

“I think that’s what differentiates our giving from giving practices of other family businesses. The founder decided not to make an endowment and then for the next generation to not practice giving… He wanted every single member of the future generations to practice giving.”

Bloomberg Is Giving $42 Million To U.S. Cities To Solve Problems In Smartest Ways Possible

Michael Bloomberg wants America to have smarter, problem-solving cities, and he’s banking on data to make it happen.

Bloomberg Philanthropies announced the launch of a $42 million initiative on Monday that will help 100 mid-sized U.S. cities better utilize data to serve their communities. The What Works Cities program partners with a handful of supportive organizations — such as Results for America and the Sunlight Foundation — to help local governments manage and analyze data to serve residents.

The initiative — which is now accepting applications from cities with populations between 100,000 and 1 million — will create open data programs that boost government transparency, help cities incorporate data into policy decision-making and fund efforts that best deliver positive results for citizens, among other functions, according to a press release from Bloomberg Philanthropies.

“Technology has unleashed an explosion of new information for city halls to work with,” Bloomberg wrote in a blog posted on The Huffington Post on Monday. “The possibilities for how cities can use that data to improve lives — and improve the way services are provided to citizens — are limitless.”

As the businessman pointed out, utilizing data has helped a number of cities solve major problems. New Orleans has made its streets safer by keeping better track of abandoned properties, for example — the city reduced blighted residences by 10,000 between September 2010 and the first half of 2013, according to the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority.

Louisville, Kentucky, has also used data made available through advancing technology to solve problems — the city is bettering its fight against air pollution by asking volunteers to attach GPS trackers to their asthma inhalers so officials can see where residents are having the most trouble breathing.

Technical support and guidance through What Works Cities — launched from within Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Government Innovation portfolio — will strive to help other communities solve similar problems, according to the former mayor of New York City.

Empowering local leadership is no new feat for Bloomberg Philanthropies. The group also runs the Mayors Challenge — an ideas competition that inspires cities to push for progress on a number of public issues with out-of-the-box strategies.

Winners of the 2014 challenge were Barcelona, Spain; Athens, Greece; Kirklees in Yorkshire, U.K.; Stockholm, Sweden; and Warsaw, Poland.

Sean Parker Just Gave $600 Million To Help Solve The World’s Biggest Problems

While it’s not unusual for tech billionaires to commit to philanthropic efforts these days, it would be tricky to find an analog for the approach being taken by former Facebook President Sean Parker with his newly announced foundation.

That’s because Parker is aiming to bring a “go big or go home” Silicon Valley-informed approach to his San Francisco-based Parker Foundation, which has been established through a $600 million gift from the Napster cofounder and Spotify board member.

The foundation will focus on three core areas where Parker thinks real progress can be made: civic engagement, global public health and life sciences. When the foundation identifies a program that shows promise in one of these areas, rather than waiting for a grant application to roll in, it will dive right in and spend big on that program.

An example of that approach is a $4.5 million grant that the foundation gave to the Global Health Group’s Malaria Elimination Initiative at the University of California, San Francisco, in an effort to arrive at effective and innovative approaches against the malaria-transmitting Anopheles mosquito that go beyond current approaches like netting or vaccines. Since roughly 584,000 people worldwide died of malaria in 2013, according to World Health Organization estimates, this could have a big impact.

The ultimate goal of the program, Parker told the San Francisco Chronicle, is the worldwide eradication of malaria, but he added that a more specific target in the near future would be to eliminate the disease within 20 years within a specific geographic area. Having such a defined goal, he said, avoids what he described as a more wasteful approach by charitable groups taking a more traditional approach to giving.

“I’m trying to preserve an entrepreneurial approach, which is to only give when I feel that there’s a solution that’s fully complete,” Parker explained to the Chronicle of Philanthropy.

The “going big” doesn’t stop there. In addition, as Parker explained to Katie Couric in a Yahoo video on Wednesday, the Parker Foundation will also be focusing on funding for cancer immunotherapy and allergy research, two areas the venture capitalist has previously made significant donations toward.

Though TechCrunch noted Parker is only one of a few tech entrepreneurs giving at such a high level, Parker believes his foundation’s model of philanthropy, one more familiar to the startup world, could help attract others like him to follow in his footsteps.