Dubai Electricity & Water Authority (DEWA) | Encouraging Innovation

Encouraging POD Innovation in DEWA

Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) adopts a clear strategy that is carefully studied to empower People of Determination, as a socially-responsible organisation that includes People of Determination. This supports the National Policy for Empowering POD. DEWA always launches initiatives and programmes to encourage innovation of DEWA’s POD employees and customers. This is part of its efforts to make Dubai the happiest city in the world. DEWA Employed 40 People of Determination in seven divisions. Their happiness score was 99% in 2021, while Social Happiness about DEWA’s supporting POD reached 94% in 2021. DEWA continues its intensive efforts to increase their happiness and satisfaction and encourage their innovations.

Sponsoring the innovations of employees of determination

Information about the creative employee		Creativity details
Name	Ahmed Mohammed Noor Al Hashemi	Ahmed is talented in Origami, the Japanese art of folding paper to design unique pieces of art in a beautiful and exquisite manner. Ahmed has always loved arts and used it to kill his spare time. His talent soon developed to an advanced level with his hard work and practice. He now creates outstanding pieces that impress everybody.
Job title	Senior Officer - Admin
Name	Haifa Ahmed Nasser Al Haddad	Haifa’s journey with writing started as an idea during her study. She used to visualise the end of short stories she read at school. She had the opportunity to join the Omniyati initiative by DEWA to make the wishes of POD true. Haifa informed Omniyati team about her wish to publish a story. DEWA’s team welcomed the idea and agreed to publish it on its expenses. Haifa was overwhelmed with happiness when she saw the first copy of her story. She was grateful to DEWA for making her wish come true, and making her feel capable of learning a lot about writing. Haifa read her story to children at the nursery, who liked it and interacted with it.
Job title	Executive - Admin
Name	Fatima Al Suwaidi	Fatima Al Suwaidi was distinguished from an early age by her unique talent, skills, and imagination that contributed to her success in creating stories for children. Al Suwaidi joined DEWA, which contributed to enriching her talents in recitation and writing. Al Suwaidi also showed passion for volunteer work that stems mainly from her humanitarian spirit to provide a helping hand to others in need. Her writing talent was discovered at one of DEWA’s internal activities. Thanks to praise and encouragement she received, Al Suwaidi decided to publish her first story entitled "Union Day". She looks forward to nurturing her talents in the future in writing and literature.
Job title	Senior Executive – Connecting distribution networks
Name	Iman Abdullah Al Mehairi	Iman has been working at DEWA’s Innovation and the Future division since 2012. She has more than 9 years of experience in digital media content. Her qualitative experience has kept pace with the division and DEWA’s milestones and has contributed to achieving several successes. Her visual impairment did not hinder her work progress and talent in writing, which was nurtured by reading, expanding her knowledge with constant support from relatives and coworkers. She started publishing articles in 2018 with Al Bayan newspaper. Her articles cover national and social issues in a positive way in terms of presentation and problem solving with an optimistic spirit that combines simple vocabulary with deep meanings. She has been covering several important issues and events such as the Hope Probe, Year of the 50th, COVID-19 pandemic, the UAE National Day, Emiratisation, education, and government services.
Job title	Sr Exec - I&TF Comm Mgmt
Name	Waleed Rostom Al Balushi	Waleed is a DEWA employee in the Business Support and Human Resources division since 2010. He received an educational scholarship to pursue a Human Resources diploma. Waleed lost his vision because of a genetic disease, but his family’s continuous support helped him overcome challenges and difficulties. “DEWA attaches great importance to People of Determination. There are several committees at DEWA that protect our rights and engages us in different activities to integrate us at work and in society,” said Waleed. Waleed loves adventures and is one of the outstanding athletes of determination in the UAE. He has a track record of achievements and awards in Goalball and Table Tennis.
Job title	Sr Telephone Operator
Name	Ahmed Al Raeesi	Ahmed Al Raeesi graduated from DEWA Academy and joined DEWA in 2016 as a technician in the Distribution Power Division.  Ahmed is an active member of the Patient Support Group at Amana Healthcare in Abu Dhabi. He has become a social media influencer and conducted interviews with inspirational People of Determination to motivate People of Determination in int UAE.
Job title	Technical

DEWA’s Employees of Determination participation in DEWA’s innovation activities

Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) includes people of determination in its innovation activities such as the Innovation Week; the Water, Energy, Technology and Environment Exhibition (WETEX) and Dubai Solar Show; and activities that aim to unleash their potential and creativity. This helps to positively include and empower people of determination at work and in society, as capable and creative individuals.

Sponsoring innovations by DEWA Academy Students for including people of determination

In accordance with Government of Dubai strategy for inclusive learning, DEWA adopts inclusive learning policies

For more information, please visit:

https://academy.dewa.gov.ae/Files/DEWA-inclusive-education-policy.pdf

https://www.moe.gov.ae/English/SiteDocuments/Rules/SNrulesEn.pdf

https://www.khda.gov.ae/cms/webparts/texteditor/documents/Education_Policy_En.pdf

DEWA Academy has adopted several People of Determination students over the years throughout all their educational stages until graduation and work. This achieves DEWA’s strategy of safe transition from inclusive learning to inclusive employment.

SMART Wheel Chair
Technology offers solutions to pressing challenges in society. Using the technical skills they acquired during their studies at DEWA Academy, the students thought of helping People of Determination, and designed the "SMART WHEELCHAIR," smart chair for People of Determination that they can control using a tool or by head movement.
The SMART WHEELCHAIR project aims to improve the normal wheelchair using Arduino to transport individuals easily from one place to another. This wheelchair suits those who can move their hands or heads. If legs cannot be moved, this chair can be controlled by a tool or head movement.

Students who participated in this project:

1- Ahmed Mohammed Awadh Ali Al Mehairi

2- Hamad Ibrahim bin Hindi

3- Saeed Fahd AbdulQader Ahmed Al Hajeri

4- Khalid Sheikh Mubarak Khamis Al Falasi

5- Khalifa Badr Salem Saeed Al Alawi

6- Mayed Waleed Mohammed Abdullah Al Ali

Sponsoring innovation in rehabilitation centers for people of determination

DEWA launched DEWA’s Innovation Centre at the Dubai Rehabilitation Centre for People of Determination in Al Qusais. The centre provides over 150 POD students with training on modern technologies. It ensures a positive innovative educational environment, increasing their knowledge, empowering them to engage in all kinds of social activities to become creative and innovative individuals.

DEWA’s Innovation Centre’s Services at Dubai Rehabilitation Centre for POD

- Imagination corner: it supports learning through widening imagination and enhancing innovation of students through a touch screen and small interactive tablets.

- The small innovator corner: it includes tools and devices that makes free learning easier to develop the students’ motor skills through making simplified robot modules, geometric shapes and architectural models.

- Solar energy corner: it connects the environmental concepts with the students’ life through a group of environmental tools to generate electricity such as (electric house, electric fan, electric vehicle).

- Robot corner: it includes various mobile robots that can be assembled such as (crane, truck, automatic car). The students assemble the plastic pieces to make the robot based on booklets or using computers.

- New Robot corner: it is a half meter progammable robot that uses simple language, it can walk, move, and speak according to its programme.

- Three-dimension printing corner: this is the heart of the lab. It has two 3D printers that can print anything in the mind of POD students by scanning models like cups, toys, fruit etc..

The impact of the support provided to the Centre

- Economic impact: sustainability of education innovative sources in the centre.

- Social impact: improving education quality in POD centres through providing innovative learning tools that meet the education needs of students.

- Strategic impact: to support the Dubai Strategy for the People of Determination 2020.

DEWA’s Innovation Centre at the Dubai Rehabilitation Centre for People of Determination received the UAE Ideas Award for promoting voluntary and humanitarian work at the 6th UAE Ideas Conference & Award.

Sponsoring innovation through DEWA’s main events

A) DEWA organised its “Forum for Happiness and Integration of People of Determination” on the Arab Day for People with Disability with participation of 16 government organisations to show their products, talents and ideas at DEWA’s tent.

B) DEWA encourages POD to launch their innovative ideas, it also supports them to implement their practical ideas. DEWA organised a youth circle for POD. POD from other government organisations and senior managers participated to commemorate the role of the late Founding Father Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, in supporting POD and to create ideas to continue the late Sheikh Zayed’s giving journey. DEWA honoured the participants. Some 46 DEWA employees also attended.

Enhance the experience of POD customers and involving them to innovate and develop smart services

DEWA is organising ongoing focus groups of POD customers and employees to develop DEWA’s services for POD, including:

(1) Studying customer experience according to the type of disability and different needs of People of Determination, and enhancing mechanisms and initiatives for ease of access to services for each disability.

( 2) DEWA booklets in Braille are available in Customer Happiness Centres

(3) Priority in service, and dedicated waiting areas suitable for People of Determination.

(4) videos about Dewa services in sign language

( 5) Wheelchairs at Customer Happiness Centres

( 6) Emergency evacuation chairs at Customer Happiness Centres.

(7) Tactile audio map with voice notification and directional tactile paving for customer with visual impairment.

(8 ) The colour of the website may be changed to suit customers who have color blindness.

(9 )The font can be enlarged to facilitate reading for the visually-impaired.

(10 ) An accessibility feature and image description to help People of Determination customers get information on an image by clicking on it.

(11 )A shortcut feature that reduces texts and facilitates navigation between web pages.

(12 ) Detailed explanation and alternative texts in DEWA’s videos.