UAE community project helps women in hospitality sector

Dubai: Soe Soe Min from Myanmar has always wished for an opportunity to improve her English language skills to better communicate with customers at the hotel where she works.

At times, when communicating with business travellers on the phone, she says her lack of proficiency in English lets her down. “I don’t think I have enough words in my vocabulary, I can do my job better if I spoke better,” she says.

Little did she know then that this opportunity would one day come to her doorstep thanks to four young women who came up with a community-led project to empower low-income expatriate women working in the hospitality industry to acquire English language skills.

Today, Soe Soe and 16 other women working in various departments at Dusit Thani are attending a weekly English class in the hotel to improve their communication skills as part of the Lotus Effect project.

Lotus Effect, a project run by three expats and one Emirati — Soukaina Rachidi, Shibani Suri, Sally Dabbour and Aisha Al Bedawi — is part of the year-long E7 Daughters of the Emirate initiative, being funded by Emirates NBD.

The E7 Daughters of the Emirates initiative itself was launched in April this year by Emirates NBD and Promise of a Generation (POAG), a Dubai community project that took shape seven years ago thanks to four expatriate women of different nationalities who came together in the city.

POAG seeks to promote culture and heritage, and endeavours to provide education and career options to enhance opportunity for the less fortunate. It is also committed to furthering awareness on the environment, public health and family besides promoting women’s leadership.

E7 Daughters of the Emirates invited women from across the UAE to apply for the programme. Thirty-five young women, five from each emirate, were selected to join the inaugural summit in April. During the summit the women received training which they used to begin their nine-month journey to implement social programmes that would have a positive impact on the UAE society.

After pitching the idea to Emirates NBD in June, The Lotus Effect project, one among other proposals aimed at helping the community, received Dh20,000 in funding and the Lotus Effect team is now actively implementing the first phase with Dusit Thani employees.

Classroom setting

“Women working in the hospitality industry receive little to no support,” said Aisha. a 20-year-old Zayed University student and creative director of Lotus Effect. “We came up with this project to give expat women the skills they need in their daily lives and to also increase customer satisfaction in preparation for the 20 million visitors who will visit the UAE for Expo 2020.”

In a traditional classroom setting every Friday, the ‘students’ from the hotel spend two hours away from work in a fun and creative environment, talking, interacting and role playing with an English instructor.

Mobile learning platform

In one class, students were asked to form groups for a dialogue exercise and suggest good places to visit in their respective home countries. The instructor helped them correct their grammatical errors when they faltered in their attempts.

Soukaina, Lotus Effect’s communications and marketing director, said, “We are doing this for [the women] not only to see the UAE be at the forefront of economic and human development, but also for the women to be able help their own countries develop if they decide to return home.”

As part of the Lotus Effect project, the team decided to include a mobile-learning platform whereby students can complete their assignments outside class at their convenience through their phones or laptops. “We knew two hours a week was not enough, so we thought that since we live in a modern age, we need to exploit its advantages.”

Members of the team also join the class in weekly shifts to boost the women’s confidence and interact with them.

“We live in different emirates, but we need to show the students we care about them, this is why we join the classes,” said Soukaina.

The students’ curriculum was crafted by a Dubai-based English language instructor, in a manner that allows the employees to get full-time exposure to the language.

Investing in employee training, said members of the Lotus Effect team, can bring the hotel plenty of benefits, such as higher profits and better quality of service.

Most of the employees at Dusit Thani are from Vietnam, Thailand, Philippines, Sri Lanka and Myanmar. Many of them seemed very eager to improve their English language skills, like Jennylove Aimee from the Philippines.

Takeaways

“Everyone uses English here and I want to learn how to use proper words and be able to pronounce them correctly,” Jennylove told Gulf News after attending her class. “I like the fact that we have dialogue exercises; it refreshes my mind and teaches me how to string sentences together properly.”

According to a Harvard Business Report, job seekers in the developing world with exceptional English can earn 30—50 per cent more than the national average.

Dusit Thani, which was the first to adopt the Lotus Effect, believes that English, being a universal language, is a vital tool in effective communication, especially since Dubai is a melting pot of traditions and cultures.

“With improved communication skills [clarity of speech, eloquence, choice of words] to transcend cultural differences, the team will be able to connect with our guests in a more convenient and accurate manner,” said Swati Anand, a training manager at the hotel.

The team behind the Lotus Effect plan to extend the project if they continue to receive the support they need. They are open to partnering with other hotels interested in hosting the language programme as they move to the second phase of their project in January.

“We are taking it step by step and would love to make it grow,” said Soukaina. “We see the interest in adopting the programme so, if all goes well, we want to help as many hotel employees as we can, including men, because empowering women has to include men.”